That’s it; that’s the post.
Stop…
…hiding in your homes.
…shovelling all day.
…compulsively checking #nlwx on Twitter.
…this State of Emergency.
Normal life will resume at 0600 tomorrow, January 25, 2020.
Or will it?
Warning
A small life lesson:
The things you must beware of
are often buried
below
the
surface
Waiting
Waiting in line for groceries
like the folks in Communist Russia used to do when I was a child
we pitied them: the shortages, the lack
of freedom.
Now, four days after the storm
we weigh the good of the many
against the needs of the few
and quietly queue
for toilet paper
milk
more storm chips.
Stormchips
Bag of stormchips
nearly gone
this is the real state of emergency b’ys
Storm Windows
I could spend all day staring out these upstairs bedroom windows at the street scenes below, the unfolding slow drama that follows the Storm of the Century. It’s slower and less dramatic than my other obsession, the #nlwx hashtag on Twitter where folks share pictures of snow-filled doorways turned into beer fridges, friendly bonfires in the middle of snow-choked streets, daredevil snowboarders flying through downtown. The street below me is gentler than Twitter; gentler than Freshwater Road is in real life.
This is not real life: this is post-storm, state of emergency. This is a man pulling his toddler on a slide down one of the main streets in the city while a police truck cruises by at 5 km/h. This is the guy next door offering his snowblower services to the folks with the twelve-foot snow wall … and to us. People are friendlier, chattier. Maybe the same people who are on Twitter bawling out others for going to the corner store for smokes. Storms bring out the best and the worst in us. It’s a parenthesis in time. Maybe what happens between the brackets, what I see out these storm windows, doesn’t count.
A Lot
I don’t know what to say except that
today has been a lot.
A lot of snow
A lot of shovelling
A lot of fun, in an odd way.
A lot of winter.
Some would say, too much.
