Cold. Cold, cold, cold

It’s cold here this week. Nothing like you readers in the north experience, I know, but cold enough! (For you readers in the south who think I’m north? Noooooo. There’s whole lot of Canada north of Ottawa. Days like today I am very, very glad I don’t live there.)

I woke this morning, checked my handy little Weather Network icon in my toolbar, and saw -29. Ick. Clicked on the icon to get the fuller story, and discovered that with a brisk wind out of the NW, it’s going to feel like -37. (That is -20F and -35F for you 19th-century holdouts to my south.)

Oh. My. Lord.

I’m wearing jeans, a tank top, a turtleneck and a big sweater. That’s fine for in the house. But now? I have to walk the dogs.

I have to go outside.

So the regular old jeans are switched out for the distinctly un-glam and boxy flannel-lined jeans. Under which go long johns. I have a down-filled jacket, but it stops at the hips. For today, I am snitching my daughter’s down-filled parka, which comes to the knees AND has a fur-lined hood. The scarf, wrapped as close to my nose as my damned glasses will allow. A hat for inside the hood. Leather mittens. Not gloves. Gloves are for spring and fall, and mild, mild winter days. Gloves are not for -29, -37 with windchill.

‘Damned’ glasses because the scarf can channel your exhalations upward, where all that hot, moist air immediately condenses on the glass, and, in these temperatures, just as immediately freezes. So you don’t just have a moment’s fog on your glasses, you have FROST. Which you have to scrape off. Scraping off means taking off your mittens, and you really, really don’t want to do that.

Whee. fun.

The dogs get walked. Indie, being part husky, doesn’t even feel the cold. She looooves the snow! She romps, she frolics, she rolls in the stuff. Daisy proffers me a dainty paw to de-ice at intervals, but she has no complaints, either. But this is a strictly business walk, girls. Once they’ve pooped, we head home. No 45 minute romp in the dog park this morning, my sweets. We were home in twenty. Boom, done.

And will the daycare children be going out, today?

I think not.

Instead, we will bake something. Stinking cold weather demands baking, I always figure.
We will read, we will do puzzles, we will colour, we will play dollies and trucks and blocks.

But these are toddlers, and toddlers need to burn off steam. So we will play popcorn and sleeping bunnies. We will build an obstacle course and let them climb and clamber and squirm over and under furniture. We will turn on the music and dance, dance, dance. I will put each of them on my knee for one bouncy game after another.

And … I take a deep, deep breath … Mary will relieve them of the “We WALK in the house. WALK!” for at least an hour today.

An hour of running. With five house-bound toddlers.

Hold me.