Sunny Days...and then...

What is it about living on the east coast which make people go a little loopy? 

Today the skies are blue and the sun is shining and the temperatures are quite pleasant.  Apparently tomorrow that is about to change.  We are in for a bit of a storm.  Which means we will go from green fields and clear roads to large quantities of snow.  Yes, it happens.  It is winter.  Shit like that has been going on ever since I was pushed out into this world.  In Canada...wait for it...in the winter...it snows.  There I said it.  The awful truth. 

Now this snowfall is predicted to end the next day.  So really, in the scheme of things, this winter storm will be rather short.  The hubby decided to go to the city (Halifax) today to get a quote for some material we need to finish our project, on the way out he stopped and talked with one of the people who live out here in the sticks.  "Going into town to get supplies?" he asked.  "There's a storm coming tomorrow." 

Every time!  People around here act like survivalists whenever they hear of a weather event.  Dog forbid that you should actually have to go shopping the day before a storm.  There is mayhem and hysteria everywhere.  Shelves are actually empty all over the stores.  Never once, in all the years I lived out west did I ever see the grocery stores with empty shelves like you do here.  In fact, if I didn't know better I would have assumed that they were just perpetually filled by some sort of magic. 

Is it the population density?  Was it normal previous to me moving here that they had to go weeks without food and water after a storm?  Or is it some kind of mass hypnosis or delusion that is at work.  Either way it leads me to believe that when the Zombie Apocalypse happens, living in the eastern part of the world will be bad.  All the food and water will be gone.  All the fuel and ammunition will be hoarded.  And the Zombie chanting will sound like..."We told you so.  We told you so. We told you so. We told you so, but you wouldn't listen." 

Sunday Afternoons and Chocolate Chip Cookies

So yay for me!  I managed to convince myself to go for a walk.  Hazzuh!  The roads were pretty much okay, there were a few spots that still had ice covering, those places I did more skating than walking.  Actually I was surprised that there was any kind of ice, after the massive rainfall we had yesterday.  In fact, I was expecting to wake up to piles and piles of snow.  But it never dropped below zero and consequently we are still in the green belt.  On a better note, I now feel less shitastic after my walk.  Perhaps, fingers crossed, this cold is beginning to bugger off. 

The neighbours once again made trip after trip after trip, this time removing sled after sled full of stuff from the cabin across the channel.  So after my walk I went down to the lake to perhaps try doing a running skate with my boots on, but the first 8' to solid ice was just water.  I'm curious to know how the neighbours managed to get on the ice with the quad that many times?  And how they managed not to go through.  Lucky people. 

I need the hubby to build me a doggy rinse shed.  The hellhound is one humungous dripping muddy icicle.  Or better yet, anyone interested in one, slightly used German Shepherd?

Cloudy with periods of dum

As I write this the clouds have moved in and the weather forecast of lots of rain looks to be about the way things are actually going to turn out.  The lake has about 9" of ice on it (well in front of the shack) and zero snow.  So it is dark grey and looks very, very slippery.  If I didn't have a shitty cold and I did have a pair of skates, I might actually go out and try things out.  What's the worst that could happen? 

The neighbour across the way has a cabin which can only be reached by boat, or in the winter by sled or quad.  Last night they made approximately a thousand trips back and forth across the channel.  I suspect they might be taking advantage of the conditions to take over much needed supplies...perhaps of the renovation kind...I'm only guessing because it was dark and I couldn't see what they were hauling, and this morning when it was light and they continued hauling I couldn't give a rats ass and so never bothered to actually look.   But as I went out to fill the bird feeder I noticed that they had now taken the sled off the back of the quad and were busy doing 360s out in the middle of the lake. 

I did my old curmudgeon shake of my head and went back into the house.  Two things which leads me to think that this is a bad idea...1) when they were doing 360s the quad almost tipped over on the two people who were riding it, and 2) the channel has a pretty decent current running through it, so 9" of ice near the shore and away from the current may not equate to 9" of ice out in the middle.  I will be seriously pissed if I have to be part of some kind of rescue attempt. 

Let the sun shine....

It really is amazing what a difference life feels like when the sun is shining.  Most especially after it's been raining, overcast, and cloudy for months on end.  Today, even though the wind is blowing enough to ruffle my hair in the house, the sun is out and the temperatures are sitting at a lovely +5.  I can so deal with that. 

I woke to the amazing feeling of no-pain to my shoulder (more like not so much pain and entirely mobile) and sun.  Wowza.  So I puttered around the house and did a few odds and sods, and then took the hell hound for a walk.  Seven kilometers of icy and muddy roads has made her one dirty dog.  She's been abandoned outside with the hopes that she will lie around on the grass and remove some of the icicles of dirt from her fur.  In the meantime I'm trying to finish a story for this weekend.  Wish me luck.  :)

Ouch

Two days ago I woke up feeling as if I had slept on my shoulder funny and pinched the nerve/muscle/whatever.  Yesterday the pain was so bad it felt as if I had my entire shoulder had been replaced without any pain killers or anesthesia, in fact it hurt so much that I couldn't get my shirt on by myself.  So I ended up taking meds and going to bed for most of the day with my arm and shoulder propped in a position of most comfort. Which wasn't all that comfortable.  The strange thing about it is that I didn't do anything stupid to it.  I chainsawed a tree up six or seven days before, so enough time has passed between occurrences that that couldn't be it.  I painted for several days in a row...different arm, so that couldn't be it.  Today the pain has subsided a bit, I was able to get dressed on my own, so that's a good thing.  But it still feels as if someone, or something, has beat the shit out of the front, back, and top of my shoulder.  Ouch.  I decided that laying there propped up wasn't helping shit, and my house was a disaster area, so I vacuumed, scrubbed, washed, made bread, and did laundry to see if it would work out the kink (or whatever the fuck it is).  The good thing about vacuuming is that whenever you jar your shoulder and you feel compelled to say fuck (which in this case is every ten or so seconds), the noise covers the language.  The bad news is that it didn't help, it still feels like someone has beat me with a baseball bat.  The good news is that it isn't any worse for the wear and mentally I feel 1000 times better because my house is all sparkly clean. 

So now I'm sitting here (after eating several homemade buns smeared in butter) with my arm propped and sipping a coffee...and waiting for the last load of laundry to finish thinking that it might be because I am getting old.  In which case--aging sucks!

Writing Fool

Today, as predicted, the temperatures have plummeted and the windchill is making it somewhat bitter and cold out there.  It happens to be my turn to be on the hot seat for my writers group next week and I have to make sure that my latest chapter is critique worthy.  (Not that there is ever an issue with me not having enough shit to get critiqued about.)  So the good thing about cold weather is that I don't feel much compulsion in sticking my butt too far out the door.  Which means that I can afford to be a writing fool all the lib long day. 

Fridays and Old Ladies

This morning as I was leaving the shack it was already +3C...so awesome.  When I got to Lunenburg it was +5C and the gas prices were at an all time low for the last ten years or so...89 cents a litre.  Huzzah!  Things were looking astonishing. 

When I got out of the car the smell that enveloped me was a smell I remembered from childhood.  It was delicious.  It was that smell we got when the weather had been in the minus thirties for weeks, and then suddenly out of the blue, some warmth hit.  Not really a spring smell, not enough dog shit, but something that lingered in the air and held the aroma of thawing trees and a warm breezes.  Its hard to explain unless you've lived through it, but it is very lovely.  Not that I am in anyway comparing the winters here to the winters in northern Ontario, they were more like the Antarctic, or Mars...

Right after my meeting I scooted back to Bridgewater because I had to do some grocery shopping and banking.  I was just coming out of the grocery store when I ran across an tiny, little old lady who was standing beside her car in the middle of the lane.  In a tremulous voice she asked me if I knew how to back cars up?  When I told her that I did, she asked me if I would be so kind as to back her car into a parking spot for her because she couldn't do it (probably because she wasn't tall enough to be able to see over the steering wheel) and when she got out of the store she wouldn't be able to back out of the spot.  She said normally she drives around and around until she finds a spot where she can just drive into, and then out of, but today she had already driven around for a half hour and couldn't find one.  When I backed it in for her she wanted to give me a Twoonie...so cute.  But the way she was offering it to me was as if she had paid many others for the same service and they actually took it.  Really?  Are there really such shitty people out there who would take money from a senior for backing a car up four feet?  It's a sad, sad world. 

Winter has come...

It looks as if winter has managed to finagle its way into the east.  Last night it dropped down to -22C...much crappiness.  But as I sit here and write it has already skyrocketed to -2.  A much better state of affairs.  I should be outside in the bush helping the hubby cut, chop, and drag wood to the wood lot but I still have one painting left to do, and I have to finish my homework for Friday, and I have a bit of a story that needs to be clicked out onto this electronic thingamajig.  So here I am doing none of those things.  Oh well.  Perhaps if I spend three or four minutes doing the blogging thing I will get my juices primed for the job. 

The sun is actually out today...shiny and making my little studio even warmer than expected.  That is one of the great things about having a big-assed south facing window.  Hopefully I will be able to get everything I want done before it goes away again.  I still want to take the hell hound out for a walk today.  So yeah...why am I wasting time blogging...?

It's an OCD thing.

Painting and winter

Before I roll up my sleeves and start working on the next set of paintings I thought I would sit down and write a word or two.  Because once I get into that side of my creative brain then everything else is neglected...in a big way. 

Good news, I did a quick visit to one of my brothers last week and noticed that he had a little space heater.  After inquiring about it I found out that it a) worked well, and b) was on sale at Costco for $99 dollars.  I've been looking for a heater for the Wookie Cave for over a year now.  I sold the little wood stove I was going to use because after much thought realized that it wouldn't work for a number of reasons.  Reason numero one was because I need consistent heat through the night.  The last thing I want is for all my paints to freeze.  Anyway I had my heart set on this marine gas fireplace I saw used in one of those tiny houses people are building...I still may get it but the price tag is over a grand and way out of my budget for now.  So as the hubby was going into the city anyway I had him pick one up.  There is now joy-joy in the Wookie Cave, it is working very nicely.  (My only concern is that on day one it knocked out a breaker...here's hoping that it was just an old breaker...faulty breaker...and that was an anomaly.)  Since then it has been working just right.  Most especially because over night the temperatures have plummeted.  But it is -11 outside and the Wookie Cave is toasty warm inside.  So yeah. 

Speaking of...I have an order for six more paintings so I best be getting at er. 

Phewie...

I'm really not sure what comes over me at the end of the year and into the holiday season.  It's as if I just give up.  This year I didn't even bother to put up a tree, let alone one single decoration.  I didn't bake treats, I didn't wrap presents, I didn't even feel slightly in the mood.  And before you think that I'm all Scroogy or Grinchy, I don't really think I am.  I just start to feel overwhelmed.  I don't know why.  It may have something to do with the fact that I think most of it is just a manufactured holiday and the only real reason for it is so that companies can make more and more money. 

The weird thing is that I used to LOVE Christmas with all of its trappings.  I was lucky enough to have parents who went full tilt into all the festivities and they made it a very special time of the year for us kids.  Perhaps the fact that I am no longer a kid and no longer have kid-like children is one of the reasons I can't seem to get into the season.  But whatever the reason, every year (unless strong-armed by outside forces) I hunker down and go into a bit of a funk. 

At least this year instead of totally checking out and spending 90% of my free time watching movies I managed to get motivated by my painting.  I finished a few pictures and a couple of them turned out not too bad.  The bad thing about that though is that I then totally neglect my writing and can't be bothered to even turn my computer on.  Usually the most motivation I can dredge up is to waste a few minutes on the iPad scrolling through Facebook and catching up on a couple of Scrabble games.  Oh well...such is the problems of the First World. 

But here we are on the up side of it and at least I can look forward to longer days and less bull.  So Happy New Year one and all!  :)