The crappy side of winter. Driving in this.

This winter feels about as long as high school. For all my happy thoughts about shovelling, I’m tired of having my hands freeze to gas pumps. I don’t want to buy any more sidewalk salt. And I simply refuse to get stuck driving 70 km/h on a barely snowy one-lane highway – or, as JF calls it, getting buick-ed.

The worst part is, I never had to deal with any of this shit when I lived in Toronto.

The constant biting winds have my (poor, overworked) optimism constantly rewinding back to when winter was awesome. Twenty years ago, I could do backward crosscuts, make ice forts, and spend whole days building snowwomen – my mom is a feminist, can you tell? – in our backyard. Today I can barely do up my snowpants.

Me and Alicia, in the early 90s. Yes, that is a one-piece neon snowsuit.

Memories of epic childhood snowball fights and two other things are currently keeping me going:

• The Olympics. Because they are an excellent reminder that some people actually like snow and ice.
• My lovely friends. Because they keep booting my butt out into the fresh air.

Thank you to: Mireille for getting me to the skating rink, Danielle for loaning me her Krazy Karpet, Kyra for trekking through deep snow in Tiny Marsh with me, Happy and Sam for getting married in an ice palace, and JF for forcing me to use the snowshoes we got for Christmas two years ago.

Mireille, my skating buddy.

Warding off the winter blues is tough. But it might be a lot easier if instead of just thinking about when winter was great, I actually did great winter things.

Maybe I’ll try curling, or maybe JF and I will build a massive igloo in the backyard. Either way, I am determined to kick February in its snowy, white ass.