These silly record snowfalls bollix daily tasks at every turn. You don’t think about it until you take an otherwise-well-rehearsed step and--bam--there’s another one. Well, to be completely honest, emptying the cat box should be quite a bit more well-rehearsed than it actually is, but yesterday it smelled essential. Unfortunately this meant plodding across crusted-over 2+ foot drifts in the back yard, until I could reach the composting zone over the back fence.
I have great snow boots. But I wasn’t wearing them. So, for the next 20 minutes mini snowballs tumbled from the inside of my jeans into my wool slippers as I puttered about the kitchen wondering whether to read a book or stare out the window.
Now it’s the garbage cans filling, and the recyclables collecting on the kitchen counter, as I’ve completely run out of space in the indoor bin. So, out I’ll go, crunching through the drifts the whole way, to yellow and green bins which will have to be shaken loose from the snow they’re 2/3 wedged into.
Yes, generally we manage these things around here, with a smile and the aplomb that goes with a novel type of mental stimulation coupled with the assumption that it will all end soon.
A broken fence, a trickle of water through the basement foundation, and two days without tv or internet, plus the relatively healthy (for most) upper-body workout of a driveway in need of shoveling have nothing on an overburdened tent camp on Hispaniola. In another life, in another dimension, I would be aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort, currently floating off the coast of Haiti; part of a medical and support staff serving as they might. Sometimes I wonder about a life full of pedestrian game moves, such that (at the moment) my greatest concern is whether I’ll be capable of single-handedly patching the back fence where the snow-burdened Leyland cypress fell over on it.
6 comments:
I find it odd to consider how much more snow you are getting than we have. Our ground is perpetually white, which is quite a blessing considering how dark the northern days can be in winter. We need the snow to reflect what little light there is.
Last week we had a 15 inch snow fall. I had to shovel our driveway over an hour in order to drive our children to school. Schools don't close here due to snow.
Our area doesn't have the equipment on hand to deal with the occasional extraordinary winter snowfall, which is why everything shuts down. At final count, the measurement was just over 3 feet. By one estimate, the highest snowfall here since 1891, when they started keeping records.
In our city, parents choose schools for the children largely based on the speciality of the school. We have public schools that specialize in a large variety of foreign languages, a math school, a science school, a basketball school, a hockey school, even a Christian school. Schools are not neighborhood based, nor are our athletics school based.
We don't have yellow school buses picking children up. Rather, parents either drive, or children use our excellent public transportation system, which never shuts down due to weather. Thus children and teachers are expected to attend school if the temperatures are above -20 degrees Centigrade.
I drive our children to school because their school is only 5 minutes away by car, but there is no direct transportation connection, and the street is perilous for winter walking.
That's interesting. I was wondering about schools there. The U.S. has just a taste of that sort of specializing--we now have a few "magnet" schools (within the public system) where students can choose to go for, usually, a Science/Technology specialty. My sister, in fact, is an English teacher in such a setting. There isn't enough space for all students who want to take advantage of options like this.
This type of system has advantages and disadvantages. It is what a small nation must do if it wants to produce world class talent. Through size alone, the US can produce world class talent in many different fields without coordinated national policy (though requiring intentionality within the individual disciplines).
A country like ours must identify talent early and develop it intentionally. The downside is that we are a nation of specialists without an equivalent number of "generalists"(people with wide and diverse backgrounds that blend sciences and liberal arts, or multiple fields within liberal arts).
I actually wanted my children to have more diversity in their pursuits. However, my son's basketball program wants training to be year round, 4 days a week. Thus no time for soccer. My daughter's art teacher wants her to have instruction 3 days a week, thus no time for music or sports. Our children are expertly trained but not particularly well rounded. And because our system is an "advance or get out" system, it is very critical in nature, and if you are pushed out of your special interest (sports, music, art) at age 13 or 14 because you failed to make the jump to the next level, there are no places for you to continue to develop within your discipline, or the opportunity to get entry level instruction in another discipline.
It is excellent for the very talented, brutal for many others.
Yes, it's an interesting idea. Most people though, I think, do not have one overriding talent. Sometimes I envy people who do, because it gives them an obvious niche in life.
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