Tag Archives: cold snap

Canadian Cold Front Moving Nowhere

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Our cold water pipe froze. Water pipes are freezing across Canada. People are trying to thaw them with blow torches. Houses are catching fire. Fire hose water is freezing as it hits the air.

When I say “our”, I mean the residents of the 15 storey building I live in. Holy suddenly-cold-shower, Batman! Holy no-water at all!

“Can’t they prevent that?” my sister Georgia demands.

“Personally, I have never had any luck with preventing it,” I reply.

So, yes, I have had pipes freeze, but not in December, not at Christmas. The end of January, yes or the middle of a bad February. Not when my festive duds are lying ready for a freshly showered me.

I have a rule. Stay in until supplies run out. If the wind-chill is -30 C. (-22 F) make do. If it’s only -20 (-5 F) go for it. It’s -20 right now. I really do need to get to a store.

The wind is rattling my windows here on the 14th floor and moaning in under the door to the hall. I wear a woolen tuque when I go down for my newspaper. A heavy hoodie goes without saying.

One day last week, Toronto was colder than the North Pole. Ottawa, was the coldest capital city on earth that day. New Year’s Eve was basically cancelled, although some hardy soul lit the fireworks anyway.

Still never confuse weather with climate, as Georgia told me just now. She lives 3 lights west of me. We’ll get together again around Easter.

(I know I’m a softie. It gets down to -40C on the prairies. I put it down to history. Some of my ancestors came over to the Plymouth Colony on the Hopewell in 1634. The Mayflower arrived in 1621. I should be hardier. But I grew up in a farm house with one wood stove and snow drifts inside the windows.)

 

Excerpt from the beginning of Hour of the Hawk: joycehowe.com

The whole thing started at breakfast.Sitting at the table, I could see the cyclists on the bike path, and people walking their dogs. My laptop was lying to my left, waiting for me as I strip-mined the newspaper for information. It was the beginning of May. The maple trees lining the road had a green mist.

Spring north of Lake Ontario is a little taste of heaven. We sigh and let go of the winter scowls that warded off frostbite. We lift our faces to the long lost sun. For however brief an interlude, it is warm. It isn’t freezing like the Arctic or sweltering like a Florida bayou.

https://115journals.com/The Crying Cure

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Regular readers of this blog know that I have been dealing with a serious family illness, that has left me “stranded” in an exquisitely beautiful mountain village, which I sometimes have called Shangri-la. (see 115Journals.com and enter Shangri-la in the search bar.)

Recently, we have made progress. The illness itself is difficult to diagnose and treat. Factoring in medicare didn’t just double the difficulty. Quite possibly, it quadrupled it. Every time we turned around we had been dropped from MediCal, once because we were signed up on July 30, with an end date of July 31. Yes, both were in 2014. Or MediCal was refusing to fill a prescription because there was no TAR -whatever that is – or the doctor had upped the dosage but MediCal disagreed. Even Kern County Health which we transferred to has a limit of 5 prescriptions a month, so we had to choose the cheapest one and pay cash. At least one life-threatening situation and hospitalization ensued. And let’s be frank, some of our medical practitioners seemed to know less than we did.

After a particularly rocky interview with a “specialist” on Skype, we discovered she was actually a nurse practitioner. Time to call in Blake, the patient’s father who has equity in his home. Time to call on connections. And so we found Dr. B and ponied up the cash.

Let’s be clear, my people have earned over $300,000 a year and paid taxes accordingly – prior to 2008. Thanks to banks that were too big to fail, my people failed, lost two homes, their savings and their retirement investment. Obama bailed out the big banks. The little guy not so much.

Dr.B.came up with a diagnosis in an hour and a half and the chief drug necessary to control it. “Bread and butter”, he said. Then he refused to let Blake spend the patrimony and referred us instead to a resident he supervised who would accept the medicare plan. After a month’s wait, during which time Dr B insisted we call as necessary; otherwise he would be annoyed, we met Dr. P and Dr. Y who listened intelligently and knew how to carry treatment forward. Today, we ran up against a problem and Dr. P. answered our query immediately.

So I fired off upbeat email reports to 5 family members, all of whom are far away and to 4 friends. Then I got really sick.

Has this happened to you? You hold things together at work or at home for a long time, go on vacation and spend two weeks in bed?

Sure I had a good excuse, the temperature dropped suddenly up here at 5,500 feet and the furnace pilot light was out. I don’t actually get a cold at change of season, I get a headache and then a very bad muscle spasm in my lower back. No appointment was available for treatment until Saturday. That’s tomorrow, friends. Exercise quells it briefly, then it comes raging back. Ditto hot Epsom salt baths, heat, positive thinking and long walks. Pain killers don’t seem to touch it. The one thing that works longest is a good hard cry. First I have to find privacy, not so easy when you’re living in other people’s houses. Then just let go.

Just now having cleared the air with copious tears, I went to the general store, ostensibly looking for a mallet and unconsciousness. I found extra strength Tylenol and Newcastle Brown Ale.