Sometimes I feel as if I’m living on a different planet, a
hostile planet---like Mars. Last night we had minus 29 C, that’s 20 Below in
Fahrenheit for you people who didn’t have to change to the Metric system or are
refusing to change.
It doesn’t matter how you measure it, it is damn cold. You
can’t go outside without getting dressed like an Eskimo—pardon me, an Inuit.
Got to be politically correct. I don’t see what difference it makes what we
call the people who live in the Arctic. Eskimo was good enough until now.
Suddenly it isn’t anymore. Anyway, I went outside to feed the birds and put on
my snowmobile suit. I don’t have a snowmobile, but the suit still comes in
handy. I wear it when I barbecue outside. Yes, I still barbecue in winter. After
all, I’m a Manitoban and we are tough, but that still doesn’t mean we don’t
freeze. We just accept this friggen cold weather and the snow that goes with
it.
Last week I had to blow the snow off my driveway three
times. It usually takes me one hour to do that and it is good exercise. It
means I have to walk for one hour and push and pull the blower every time I
change direction. It gets tiring.
Christmas has come and gone. Today is Boxing Day. Nothing to
do with boxing, but I can see the people in the stores today pushing each other
to get to the items advertised as ‘Door crashers’. Sometimes they have only one
of those items. The odd boxing match might just happen then.
We don’t go shopping on Boxing Day. Usually, the prices stay
low for the rest of the week, because now it is ‘Boxing Week’. I have to admit,
there are some pretty good bargains to be had. I bought myself a fishing reel
from Cabelas—on line. It will be delivered to my door within the next couple of
weeks and it didn’t cost me any shipping charges. Can’t argue with that and it
beats standing in line in the store or even driving there. Everything done from
the comfort of my home. I bought it as a ‘Before Boxing Day’ sale and the price
was within my budget. Now I can’t wait to go fishing again.
It was an item I actually needed. Many people go out and
spend a lot of money on items they don’t really need, but it is a good deal
they can’t turn down. That’s one of the ways of getting into financial
trouble—and many people do at this time of year.
Electronic items are the big items now and now is the time
to buy them. That’s how I bought my printers a couple of years ago. The printers were cheaper than the
replacement cartridges. And that is how we fill our garbage dumps! We live in
an age of utter waste. Nothing gets repaired anymore and nothing lasts, either.
It is a shame.
We had a toaster oven that stopped working. A small micro
switch that would have cost pennies would have repaired it but you can’t get spare parts, so we bought a new one and took the old old to the dump. The batteries in
the ‘Sniffer Sweeper Vacuum’ my wife owned went dead. When I called the
manufacturer the woman told me they didn’t have replacement batteries, because
you couldn’t replace the original one, which was nonsense. The batteries would
have been so simple to replace. You didn’t even have to solder anything. I
could have bought batteries from China: 10,000 for $1,000. Obviously
not an option. I needed only two and I had no intentions of opening a store to
sell batteries.
The woman’s advice was to buy a new ‘Swiffer’. Wonderful advice. They had a
summit in Paris discussing how to clean up the
air and the environment which will cost the countries that ‘have money’, like Canada,
billions of dollars and the loss of jobs. How about forcing manufacturers to build items that last and
can be repaired? That would be a great start to clean up the environment and
wouldn’t cost billions to implement. It may even create jobs.
Or how about putting effort into developing a drug that cures
the common cold? What brings that up? Well—I have one right now. Got it as a
Christmas present. Actually, I probably got it a few days before Christmas from
some unknown donor and after incubating inside my body busily creating millions of
germs it made its appearance in the morning of December 24—just in time for
Christmas Eve. It started with a scratchy throat and developed into a burning
throat and a cough. The war is on. Now I’m drinking plenty of water, eat cough
candies and take the occasional cold-medicine, which does nothing but give me a
dull head.
I didn’t let that spoil my Christmas. I still ate the ham
and the dumplings my wife made and devoured the red cabbage with gusto; I had a
glass of eggnog and a bottle of beer and snacked on more cookies and chocolates
I should have. But what the heck—it is Christmas. We are allowed a few
indiscretions when it comes to eating. Plenty of ham left. The kids and
grandchildren celebrated with us and it was fun. Yesterday, we went to our
son’s place and stuffed ourselves with turkey. It was tender and tasted great.
He and our daughter-in-law went all out and did a wonderful job. There is
nothing better than getting together with family sharing a scrumptious meal and a drink or two.
There should be a new law that declares every day
‘Christmas’. Wouldn’t it be nice to be in the Christmas spirit each and every
day? To give presents to each other instead of exchanging bullets and bombs? To
love our neighbors instead of hating them and wanting to kill them because they
are different from us? Instead of destruction there would be construction. Everybody
would work and have no time making plans who to kill next. Now that would be
the best present of all and the world would be a much nicer place, even if it
is an alien planet with extreme weather. We can deal with that.
Enjoy the rest of the year. 2016 is on its way.
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| We mustn't forget about our feathered friends who are also suffering in this cold |
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