What does one do when Canada camps out on your front stoop?
A) Shovel the stoop in hopes a snow caterpillar (i.e. drift) arrives.
B) Perform a nude interpretive dance of “O, Canada”.
C) Throw boiling hot water into the wind with the intent of having your flesh seared.
D) Play chicken with the plow truck.
E) Wet the street down to make an impromptu ice rink… for cars.
The answer is F) you stay inside and make sure the pipes don’t burst.
The Fields are no stranger to winter weather. There have been multiple times where temperatures have reached -23.3° C (-10° F) or less in my lifetime. That doesn’t mean I have to like it. This is where someone chimes in “well, here’s it’s (lesser temperature) every winter!” We all know that person.
You know what? Good for you! Do you want a cookie? If I’m grumbling about -24° C weather (with a hearty -38° C wind chill), I’m not all that interested in your location right now. I’m more interested in busting up that snow drift at the end of my driveway, courtesy of the street department, to get to my mailbox. Better yet, I’m trying to think of places that I could do a nude interpretive dance of “O, Canada” without receiving a blue ribbon in frostbite or hypothermia. As I type, I hear another plow truck. The shovel just hit something very crunchy. I think he might have broken up more of my curb. 😐
All of this can be used for good though. If I ever get out of here, which could simply mean my house right now, I know that relocating further North is out of the question. I’m through with Winter. I can’t be shut up more than 24 hours in my house or I start to feel all weird. It’s that kind of weird you get when you buy a completely inappropriate gift for someone and no one else finds the humour in it. I should be doing something right now. Adventure! At the very least, things at the office. OK, so maybe it’s just things at the office but still. There’s a potential for adventure. I’ll leave my office door open for that.
Maybe I could be a beach bum in some Caribbean island, and spend the rest of my days scaring children and making people give me pocket change by following them around talking gibberish? I’d make a little hut out of corrugated metal and share it with a coconut named Nigel, who would always correct me by saying “‘Sir’ Nigel, if you please.” I’d also scavenge a small radio that would play hokey lite rock where I would sing out of key to Jimmy Buffet and Christoper Cross. Yeah, that’s the life right there.
Corvidae in the Fields 
We had a windchill of -10 here last night. I will concur that it is frustrating to hear others talk about how much colder it is where they’re from. It’s a lot easier when you’re used to it. Down here, people get upset whenever it dips below freezing.
This weather is just not right. Coconuts and Christopher Cross are both preferable to biting winds and freezing weather. I commiserate. I’m only a few hours from Mexico–it should never ever be in the teens here. I live here so that I don’t have to know what my poor great aunt in North Carolina woke up to–seven degrees. It doesn’t seem like these temps should exist on earth. I hope “O Canada” is a short anthem, so that you don’t risk frostbite.
It’s about a minute and a half, unless it’s sung by William Shatner. He does it in five and a half.
You’d have to move pretty far south to avoid this one. It’s supposed to be 13F here later this evening.
13F for a polar vortex? I’ll take it.