"It's a nice day for a white wedding"

The view from our front window

The view from our front door

The view from our right front window

The view from our toy room. Feel free to measure that snow on the patio table. 

The view from my kitchen window. 

Today, it is -10F/-23C on average. That's not just cold. I don't think you can imagine the cold unless you've been here (or live with Santa). It's been snowing for over a week. It's actually too cold to shovel or use a snow blower. It took me an hour to get Buck to school today (yes, we still go to school on days like this). It took RK an hour and a half to get downtown to work. The meanest and dumbest people in the world wait until days like this to drive. They sit and wait and then take their Honda CRV's without snow tires or chains and try to drive them up country roads while talking on a cel phone that costs more than their car.  And, after 5 young men in trucks have abandoned their warm reliable vehicles to push the Honda up the hill, CRV-guy proceeds to cut everyone off at the next intersection because "he's late." All of Calgary is late today...but CRV is very important and his time is valuable. We just have to understand. 

After my hour long commute to Buck's school, I realized we'd forgotten his gloves. For one shining moment, I was the worst mommy on the planet. Abusive even. That lady who drowned her kids at least did it in a warm tub. My valiant 5 year old looked at me and said, "I want to go home." I could only say, "Home is a lot farther away than your warm classroom right now. I'm so sorry." Don't even get me started on poor Thunder who just has to ride along for the hour and then get out for 10 minutes only to get right back in the car. Wherever you are, the weather is way better than it is here. Please relish this.

To redeem myself, I drove to the nearest Winners (like Marshals) and bought 2 new pairs of gloves. I drove them back to school and had to convince the school secretary that she had to explain to Buck that I bought the gloves because if he thought they were from the Lost and Found, he'd never wear them (OCD runs deep in our family). I left Thunder in the car for this installment. I bought him a toy camera which I don't plan to take out of the box because I'm going to wrap it and use it as a Christmas present in 4 weeks. That's one to write down.

My favorite part of this story is that both Buck's teacher and the secretary said, "I don't think they'll go outside today, it's too cold." So, I bought the gloves for nothing except in case of emergency.

Speaking of emergencies - the fire alarm went off in the rec centre where I was using an elliptical machine this morning (after the gloves). Thunder was in the daycare, so I went down to see if they were going to evacuate the babies. It's still -23C, mind you, so right then and there I had to decide (in my spandex and t-shirt) if I'd rather die by burning to death or freezing to death. I was saved the decision by an announcement that "The fire alarm was found to be erroneous." I had already decided on burning anyway. It was only poor Thunder I was sad about. At least they would have gotten him outside.