Let it Snow!
Dec 22, 2008 Environment, Family life
About 30 cm of snow fell on Vancouver yesterday. This morning, I walked in deep snow to get to work. It looks like Quebec City. It is absolutely beautiful!
Vancouver in itself is not the most beautiful of cities. In my opinion, its main appeal comes not from the city itself, but from what is around it: ocean, mountains, wild nature within reach… But on a day like today, the city is transformed and looks like the magical kingdom of a fairy tale. I love love love it!
I have never seen something like that here, as I have mentioned earlier. The temperature is not supposed to warm up significantly before Christmas (and it should snow again on Christmas Eve). It will be the first white Christmas in Vancouver since 1998. Hopefully Zak’s family makes it here tomorrow, in between two snow falls.
I can’t help but feel like I’m part of a historical event. I’m sure we’ll be talking about this Christmas for years to come, especially when our feet will be in 2 inches of rain puddles on Christmas Eve (or during the Olympics next winter). My only regret is that my son is not old enough to truly participate in the enthusiasm (he’s still not sure about the whole snow thing) and he will not remember it.
Every night I go to bed, I take a long, hard look out my window for fear that it could be gone in the morning. That’s what usually happens: you wake up and during your sleep, the snow has turned to rain and melted everything into a slushy mess. It hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. And my real fear is that such a snow event could never happen again in these parts. Hopefully it won’t be the case, but with global warming, who knows if my son will again someday be lucky enough to play in so much snow downtown Vancouver?
In the meantime, Zak and him are stranded: they tried going out this morning, but even with our mega-stroller, there is no way he could navigate the sidewalks with so much snow. We need a sled!
We’re getting old…
Dec 19, 2008 Uncategorized
Talking about the weather with Zak…
Me: “With all the whining going around, it’s hard to believe that 20 years ago, this kind of weather happened every winter.”
Zak: “Not even that long ago! When I was a kid, we… Yeah, I guess that was 20 years ago…”
First Snow
Dec 16, 2008 Uncategorized
It snowed this weekend! We always get really excited when it snows here, because it’s unusual and snow rarely sticks to the ground for more than a few hours. So we jumped on the opportunity to show our son his first snow… Well, at least, the first he would be aware of. We were very enthusiastic, but apparently, things didn’t look as bright for our boy.
It may have had something to do with the huge suit he had to wear, which hampered his movements. Or it could be his first slide down the hill with me, when his face got covered in snow. Either way, he wasn’t overly impressed with the white stuff. When we took him for another slide, this time on a much smaller scale, he didn’t cry or complain, but his only comment when we stopped was: “All done!”. I guess it says it all.
Zak tried again to get him to play in the snow yesterday with the same result. Hopefully that is only temporary puzzlement and it will be healed with time and a lot of communicating enthusiasm on our part. It is supposed to remain cold for the rest of the week and snow again before everything melts. Now if only we still had a dog! The only smile we got out of our boy on Sunday was when a dog came by, chasing its ball in the snow, happy as a clam with the white stuff.
Sigh! I guess we can’t have it all.
Brrr…
Dec 16, 2008 Uncategorized
It’s cold these days in Vancouver.
Ok, I know, it’s winter and it’s still only -7, -12 with the wind this morning. Nothing to write home about when you grew up in the East, where the temperatures dip towards -20 several times each year and a cold snap means -35, not -5. But what we are experiencing right now is fairly unusual in these parts, and the problem is, a few years of living here turns your average Quebecker into a wuss.
I’m not about to start complaining about the weather, though! I love the cold, or at least I don’t mind it. I just need to adjust. This morning I found out that I should have piled up one more layer of fleece before putting on my down under my Gore-Tex jacket. Duly noted. I’ll do it tomorrow. I also need to start carrying lip balm around and slapping my face and hands with cream if I don’t want my skin to look like that of a crocodile before the end of the week. I’m itching like crazy.
But I know it won’t last, so I’m enjoying every minute of it. I have a widget on my desktop that shows the weather in Montreal and Vancouver, and right now, they’re both showing -6. Unusual. We had snow Saturday night (more about this in a following post), and more is supposedly on its way. The huge snow suit that my cousin lent me for our son to use finally came out of the closet, and although my boy has trouble walking with all that puffiness, he’s warm and cozy in there.
Of course it’s not all fun and games. I haven’t been to Stanley Park lately, but the ducks (who winter here, in the “South”) must be scrambling to find a patch of broken ice on the surface of the pond. The homeless people, who flock here because of our warm weather, are now scrambling to find a place to spend the night. Drivers are visiting the ditch in huge numbers, as nobody here uses snow tires and nobody knows how to drive in the snow anyway. And I’m freezing at the office because it always takes several days before the inside temperature is properly adjusted after a temperature change outside (I’m sure we’ll cook for a few days when the warmth comes back).
On the bright side, we can hope that somewhere in the ravaged forests near Kelowna, the pine beetles are freezing to death inside their trees. Don’t get me wrong: I have nothing against the pine beetles. They are merely doing what they have been doing for thousands of years. But dying in the winter is also a normal thing for them to do, so I’d like to encourage it.
As a side note: some people may be tempted to say that this is proof there is no such thing as global warming. Let there be noted that 50 years ago, ponds and lakes in this area froze over every winter, enough for people to walk on them. Nowadays, if they stay covered with ice for a few days in a row it’s an exception sure to make the news. Draw your own conclusions.
Christmas is Coming!
Dec 11, 2008 Uncategorized
Christmas is fast approaching and my son is getting more and more hilarious every day! We had to move all the ornaments up a few inches in the tree after he pulled on them until they came off, but he wasn’t phased: he started putting his own toys in the tree to decorate it. Every morning, he points at the tree and says “flash-light”, the way he designates every light, to ask us to turn the Christmas lights on. He enjoyed his first taste of egg nog so much that it is now part of his vocabulary: no-nog. We took him to the Santa Claus Parade and he danced to the sound of the marching bands and neighed at the horses.
But the most hilarious adventure so far was his reaction to his Christmas present (still wrapped, of course). We bought him a run bike. It was in the closet for a while, but it was taking some valuable space, so Zak decided to wrap it up and put it under a tree. But how do you wrap a bike? He used some boxes we had and wrapped them up around it. He did a great job, wrapping a box around the handlebar and a big one around the weels and frame, using cardboard from other boxes to sceal everything together with lots of tape.
When we put that thing under the tree, however, our boy exclaimed “Bike!” and climbed up on it right away! Now, he has no clue that there is something in it. He just figures his dad built him a cardboard bike, which is what it looks like, and he’s happy with it! He pushes it around, sits on it, falls on his side (the box is flat on the bottom, but not wide, so when he lifts his legs up it’s not very stable).
Now, I’m sure he’ll like the content of the box even better. But we may have trouble for those few minutes when we’ll have to convince him to rip apart this wonderful toy as he won’t understand that there is something inside..
A Mother’s Guilt
Dec 9, 2008 Family life
Moms feel guilty all the time, especially, it seems, working mothers. I’m not immune to that, but my guilt is different than that of most working mothers.
I don’t feel guilty about leaving my child on week days. My husband stays home with him and frankly, I’m convinced that he does a much better job than I would do if I was home. I come back all the time to new activities he’s invented for our now 16-month-old. He finds it hard, of course (it IS hard), but he has tons of imagination to think of new ways to entertain himself and our son and occupy their time. And in the process, my son is learning and getting very stimulated, that is certainly not a problem.
No, my guilt is different. When I’m home on weekends, I try to be the main care provider to give my husband a break, although that’s sometimes hard because now it’s him who knows best what my son’s routine is, how much of what he usually eats, etc. I do what I can, and I enjoy it tremendously, and I do wish I could have more time at home with my family. But on Sunday nights, when I’m exhausted after two days of running after a seemingly never-tired-enough-to-stop toddler, I sometimes have a thought in the back of my head…
Thank God, tomorrow I can rest at work!
And that’s when I feel guilty.
A historical moment
Nov 5, 2008 Uncategorized
It has been said and said again, and you might be sick of hearing that cliché at this point. But I do feel like I have just been through a historical moment. One of those milestones that everyone has in their lives so they can say “Oh, yeah, I remember, that happened just before the assassination of JFK. That day, I was doing such and such”. In my life, there has been the death of lady Di, there has been 9/11… Now there is the election of Barack Obama.
I was so happy last night to be in the Pacific time zone and to be able to live it live. I watched his victory speech, and the tears were running down my cheeks. I’m not even sure why. Because he is the first Black president and after studying the history of the United States rather extensively in University, I feel the signification of that milestone deep inside my bones? Because after 8 years of right-wing government I am hoping that the United States will finally take a turn for the better and regain some of their lost clout? Simply because Obama has amazing speech writers and knows how to deliver a speech flawlessly and pull on the hearstrings of all his over-sensitive viewers (which I know I am a part of)? I don’t know, and last night, really, I didn’t care.
I know that Obama may not live up to our expectations. Who could? He was almost pictured as a demi-god. Nobody is perfect. But last night, I was just submerged in the moment and I celebrated with all Americans and, really, with the rest of the world. Here was hope, delivered on a platter. Here was the American dream. I know, it’s cheezy. But it’s still true. And I can just imagine what that victory must have been for those who worked so hard for it, those who fought for the rights of the Black people in the United States. Do you realize that it was only 50 years ago that Black people didn’t have the right to sit with White people pretty much anywhere? It wasn’t that long ago: a lot of those who fought for desegregation are still alive today. We saw Reverend Jesse Jackson crylast night, and I can just imagine all that must have been going in his head.
And this morning, when they were playing Obama’s speech on the radio and everyone was chanting “Obama! Obama!”, our son started repeating “Mama! Mama!” Too cute.