How Cold WAS It?

If you’re reading this, it means you survived January. Congratulations!

A writer friend of mine who lives in Texas flew to Toronto last week to do a TV interview. She bemoaned the extreme cold temperatures there. Why, one day it dropped to -10 C! With every drop of compassion in my sweet little heart, I told her “suck it up, Buttercup.” I’m nice like that.

It’s hard to feel sympathetic when you’re emptying your freezer so you can crawl inside to warm up. The weirdest things go on around you in these -30 temperatures. Take last week.

On Monday, I was on my way home from work when I saw a rooster running in to KFC begging to use the deep fryer.

On Tuesday, I noticed Tim Horton’s was offering coffee on a stick.

Wednesday, I tried to say something to my husband while we stood outside but my words froze. I had to gather up handfuls of sentences and take them inside to thaw before he could hear them. He suggested I toss them in the freezer so he could take them out one at a time at his own convenience. They’re still there.

While dashing from the office to my car on Thursday, my shadow froze to the sidewalk. I decided I’ll just leave it there until spring. By then, as my friend Doug Hyde pointed out, it will be a former shadow of myself.

Friday, my hubby climbed onto the roof to chisel smoke off the top of the chimney.

Saturday, we babysat our grandsons and when I tucked the middle one into bed, he asked for a toaster to cuddle instead of his teddy bear.

On Sunday, our doorbell rang. A snowman stood on the doorstep, asking to come in and sleep on our couch. I sent him back out just in time to see a dog trotting by, wearing cats around his neck.

And if you’re still reading, you survived my jokes and truly deserve a break in the weather!

Random winter person.

If you’re a winter person, I admire you. I really do. I wimply don’t do outdoors in January if I can help it. God blessed me with an attached garage, so I don’t really step out until I’ve parked my car at work and run inside. Then I do the same in reverse. If I must go for groceries or other errands, it’s more quick dashes across the glacial parking lot and that’s it. If you add up all my outdoor time so far this winter, including the hour of sledding with my family on Christmas Day, it probably totals 66 minutes and 12 seconds.

So why do we live here? When I asked my daughter that question one frigid day when she was about eight years old, she looked at me and, in a tone that made it sound like the most obvious answer in the world, she said, “because all our friends live here!”

She had a point. Who but fellow Manitobans truly get it? We love commiserating about the weather and groaning over lame how-cold-was-it jokes. There’s some kind of sick pride in knowing we have it colder than most of the planet, like this makes us tougher and stronger. Maybe it just makes us stupider. Either way, we’re in this together and that’s worth something.

So as you flip your calendar over, cheer up. Having January behind us can mean only one thing: another two and a half months of winter. Spring has to come eventually, and no one on the planet appreciates spring more than we do here. Hang in there, folks. And stay warm.