Right on Schedule: February Cabin Fever

Our first significant winter storm hit last night.

We got some snow overnight. Not a whole lot – about 10 cm, I think. (Just shy of four inches.) Enough to snarl and slow traffic, but not enough to close roads or schools.

It did mean, though, that I’d need to shovel before the parents arrived. The ploughs had been by in the night – bless them! – but the result is a metre-high bank separating sidewalk from the street. Can’t have people trying to scale that with a baby in their arms. So out I go —

— and my LORD, the wind. Straight out of the west. (North and west, or any combination thereof, are nasty, nasty winds.) By the time I’d hacked a narrow path through the bank, my fingertips were burning with cold and my face bright red. And not through exertion.

Came in and checked the weather icon on my laptop. Temperature, -22; winds gusting to 50km, making for a windchill of -35.*

Guess we’ll be staying in. Again. For the tenth straight day. That’s TWO SOLID WEEKS of being indoors. Housebound. With a two-year-old (sometimes two of them) and three 18-month-olds. Sigh.

In fact, the kids are managing just fine. The vast vistas of my small house suffice for their short legs. After pounding through the living room to the dining room, rounding the corner to the front hall so as to enter the living room and pound down to the dining room… After doing that, oh THREE HUNDRED TIMES in a morning, they’ve had lots and lots and lots of exercise.

But me? I have to get out. I think I’ll get Emma to mind the fort during afternoon naps, so I can get out, burn off some steam, get some fresh air and a little sunlight (assuming some happens). Yes, indeed. I’m going to SHOVEL THE DRIVE!!

You takes your entertainment where you finds it in this job.
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* That’d be -8F, 31 mph, and -31F respectively.