{Virtual Coffee}

Holy Crap! If we were meeting for coffee today I would probably swear a lot because it's been so ridiculously cold here these last ten days or so. Every day has been a red light day. Which kind of means the laundry is piling up and we have started to turn our underpants inside out to get another day of wear out of them. Here is what the inside of my front door lock looks like (remember this is INSIDE. I know it looks like a mushroom growing but it's frost)

And this is what our thermometer looked like yesterday morning

There was no mercury in it, and the mercury was trying to dip LOWER than the cradle allowed. Oh, and our thermometer with the spring in it sprung - it's hanging off it's hinge. Gratefully last night the temperature went up to minus 19. Yesterday morning I heard mutterings amongst my fellow commuters of minus 43. Yeah, that's even off the register of our Canadian thermometers. It's the kind of cold where your coat material freezes on contact with the air, making it crunchy and hard to bend at the elbow. And then there's the instant freezing of the water in the corners of the eye (my perennial favorite). Toes? What toes? I don't think I've felt mine since last Tuesday. And while I'm on a full blown rant let me tell you my whole house smells like feet - wet, sweaty boots and sour snow pants. Just when is a body supposed to wash these things when you need to wear them every day and oh yeah - the little detail of not being able to put them in the dryer or else they lose their waterproof-ability.

If we were meeting for coffee today even I would be drinking mine hot. Because although today feels like a day at the beach at minus 15, I can't shake this chill.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would tell you about a mystical experience I had last Thursday. Riley was playing outside after school, trying to increase his frostbite to amputation when he came banging on the door, begging me to come outside and "look". He had spotted an owl perched in a tree in our backyard. The goddesses of photography were with me because I had my camera at the ready with my zoom lens on already (trying to capture the woodpecker I had seen earlier). I got a few snaps of him but spooked him when I got greedy and tried to get closer.

I had never seen an owl outside of captivity before. I had seen a pair last summer in the country but it was night and I really just saw their shapes. We got a full frontal with this guy and when he flew off - yikes - so other-worldly. I could barely think of anything but for a few days. Which led me to googling the meaning of owls, their presence on a spiritual level. I learned a lesson in doing that because there was a huge disparity in information, from one site reading that owls are believed to guide recently departed souls to a few other sites saying that if you see an owl you will be guaranteed to drop dead within hours or days. That whole idea comes from their night vision and taking it a step (or too many steps) further. What I can say for sure was that it moved me deeply witnessing it in the "wild" (as "wild" as suburbia can be deemed) and that there are no words to describe how it left me.

If we were meeting for coffee today you might notice that my poinsettia plant from Christmas is in the bin.

I just can't be trusted with houseplants. Anything that survives me will survive nuclear holocaust. Although if you look carefully, through all the abuse it is still sprouting new green growth which is really kind of inspiring. I often think I am being deprived of life giving sustenance and don't sprout nearly as many new leaves as this insistent little beggar.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would give a big thumbs down for Future Shop. Yesterday I was looking for a particular Wii game for Riley and iMan for their upcoming collective birthdays - thought I had found it online since their website said a particular store had THREE copies of it and after I hiked there on my lunch hour in this -30 degree weather I found out the store had NO copies, even after badgering two employees to help me look. I need to ask - what is the point of the button that helps you to see if it is in stock at a certain store if, when you get there, the product really isn't in stock? The paranoid side of me says it's just a scam to get you in the store to buy something else. I am personally boycotting Future Shop since their sales staff always treats me like dirt. I am not alone in thinking that store should send their employees for classes in customer service.

If we were meeting for coffee today I would have to leave early because it's snowing again. After enjoying those cerulean blue skies of arctic frigidity, now that it is above -20 it is flaking out there. There should be a natural law that says when it's minus too much, snow falling is punishable by eternal summer.

Go and have a peek in Amy's door for some more coffee. There is usually something good to eat there too.