"Winter is coming"

I am fairly sure than when he conceived the Starks of Winterfell, George R. R. Martin was thinking of Canadians.  Possibly, those dwelling in the Northern Ontario reaches where I find myself making my home.  That "Winter is coming" is very much part of the psyche here is unquestionable, this I judge from the year and a half I have been here.

As soon as August this year when the trees began turning, I sensed a change in the mood prevailing, even my own.  It was a queer mixture of anticipation and resignation, flavoured with glee in some cases, stark unhappiness in others.

September drifted by, with the leaves in full bloom of colour, but by October they were already on their way to falling off the trees.  Still, there were some truly fine days in both months, real autumn days in terms of colour but blessed with temperatures in the low 20s (degrees Celsius).  Altogether tolerable, those days that held a lingering whiff of the summer than never quite was.

With the coming of November, the warmth began to recede and the cold stole the march.  The daily high temperatures slipped further and further down the scale, even though no snow came.  Oh, there were one or two sallies, apologetic snowfalls I called them, because the flakes had hardly hit the ground before they disappeared.  There was no accumulation even up to the middle of the month.  Not until the final ten days of the month, when talk of American Thanksgiving and Black Friday were everywhere, and Christmas decorations and music were already making their appearance, did the snow finally come.

The first accumulated snow was brought on heavy winds over the course of last weekend.  What did follow were almost Arctic temperatures that meant outer layers for me went from tights and sweaters to ski jackets and down coats.  The first winter storm showed up today, and shed an even greater accumulation on top of that which had largely been ignored as of little consequence.  Not today though, snow plows came out, people are shoveling driveways, and I canceled a possible trip to another library sale.  Days like these give me zero incentive to stir beyond the precincts of our house.

Here are some photos I took for both weekends, past and current:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, those last photos were taken out of doors, after dark.  I felt somewhat restless, in spite of thoroughly enjoying my day off following a harrowing end to the week at work.  So, I bundled up in my snow suit, put on my Caterpillar snow boots with their surefooted tread, and put the little Nipper in his harness and clipped the leash on him, and away we went around the block.  I found it rather soothing to be out there in the light snow, thoroughly cocooned from the snow except for my face, but enjoying the gentle bite of the cold against my cheeks and eyelids.

Officially, winter is not for another three weeks, the solstice this year falls on December 21.  Clearly, though, winter is coming, and Old Man Winter has stolen the last few weeks of fall for himself.

Reading projects, and more changes

Yes, I have an agenda now, to schedule things in and remind myself to get things done.  It doesn't help if I don't write everything I need to do in there.  Like keep up with this blog.  I am making a note of my next scheduled post date right now.  Honestly!

Two months ago, I was starting out my grandly-titled (in my mind, anyway) "Year End Reading Project".  A Song of Ice and Fire (Books 1-4) had been languishing on my TBR (to-be-read) shelf for more than a year since my birthday of 2012, and I decided it was time to give them a go.  Or, I should say, another go.  I started reading A Game of Thrones in October 2012, but quit within the first hundred pages.  I simply couldn't get into the book, and the author's use of character names instead of chapter numbers almost guaranteed I would end up confused and lost about who was whom, much as I was the first time I read The Lord of the Rings.

However, I decided that four months left in the year and four books in my boxed set was serendipitous, so I embarked (again) on the journey into the fantasy of George R. R. Martin.  I resolved to read the books on my lunch break at work, and read something else on the weekends.  I bought myself a book to use as a book journal, so that I could keep people straight, then discovered that the books had appendices naming the major, and not a few of the minor,  characters.

Fast forward two months, and instead of being halfway through, I am very nearly done with all four books.  I have been sucked into the Westerosi universe, and leave only reluctantly.  As a consequence, I read the second book over the space of 4 days, and the third and fourth in about two weeks each.  I only managed to stay true to my original calendar with the first book.  The fifth is now on its way, ordered via Amazon.ca, thank goodness.

Since I took over the organization of our home finances, things have been somewhat more orderly.  After a mis-communication that saw us over-paying the hydro and under-paying the gas bills, G and I have worked out a system whereby he opens and sorts the mail, hands off all the bills to me, I input them into the spreadsheet I use for tracking, and all bills are sorted into 3 neatly labeled caddies (one for unpaid, two for paid).  At any point in time, I can hand him all outstanding bills if needed, or confirm all paid bills.  Although I pay everything online, I print the payment confirmations.  Computer systems do fail, occasionally.

Another recent contribution of mine to our "home economics", is the use of a menu plan for weeknight meals and grocery shopping.  For some many months, one of my main bones of contention with G has been how late we eat on weeknights.  Often it is not until he collects me after work that he turns his mind to what we will eat for dinner, and that usually means some amount of waiting for food to be prepared.  Jamaicans do not eat dinner at 9:30 p.m. very often, at least not the ones I know.  However, that was becoming a normal practice for us, and it began to annoy me to no end.  Two weeks ago, I decided to end this practice by using one of the dozen or more cookbooks we have as a basis for menu-planning.  Specifically, Betty Crocker's Big Book of Weeknight Dinners.

The results have been encouraging so far.  Rather than going to the supermarket every couple weeks and spending $300-400 to buy random items we might like to eat, and still complaining that there's nothing available to make dinner (or lunch for work), we select recipes for each night, plan our shopping list accordingly, and I make weeknight dinners now, with help from G where needed.  Leftovers become lunch the following day, and usually there are leftovers.  So far we have not spent more than $140 on each week, and it has not been necessary for me to purchase lunch (usually between $5 and $10 per day), or any items specifically for lunch (such as prepared salads).  Saturdays and Sundays, meals remain G's sole responsibility.

As of this week, and for the foreseeable future, I will not need a lunch anymore.  My hours have been cut at work, the usual "budget cutback" cry has become fashionable in my workplace.  It came as a blow, but with many of the major bills out of the way for this year, such as the property tax, I won't complain.  For the rest of the year, or until my hours go up again, we will just have to tighten the belt a little further.  As a Jamaican, this is nothing new to me.  I am new to being a part-time employee, having been employed full-time in salaried positions since I started working at 20, but with a new life comes new things.

Something new is up next tonight: With the end of the Showtime series Dexter, it became necessary for G and I to find a favourite series to spend some of our "couple time" watching.  After seeing my enthusiasm over the Game of Thrones book, he agreed to give the HBO series based on the books a try.  We are halfway through the first of three seasons, but I can confidently say we have a new favourite series!

2013 So much, so little..

My last post focused on fall and the beginning of winter 2012/13, and I expected to update this blog sooner rather than later.

This year did not start well.  It started with a call from my mother in tears, and for a moment my heart stopped as I thought something had happened to my much-loved younger brother.  However, it was not my younger brother affected, it was hers.  My uncle, my mother's younger brother, one of four of my Grandmother's children, died 1 January 2013 of a massive coronary.  I left Canada for the first time since arriving in June 2012, not for Jamaica, but for New York State, where my uncle's life would be commemorated, celebrated and mourned.

I flew from Sudbury to Toronto, cleared US Customs in Toronto with minimal trouble (I forgot to fill in my I-94 immigration form, but the officer was gentle, I think he clearly saw my grief when he asked me my purpose of travel), and flew to JFK where I was collected by my cousin.  It had been more than a decade since I was in that airport last, nothing seemed the least familiar.  Even Yonkers was strangely unfamiliar, as we never went to any of the areas near downtown I had been used to from my time there, we spent all our time in the residential area my uncle now lived in.

Throughout the various events, I stayed well out of the way, did what I could to be helpful, and refused to spend any time in the viewing room of the funeral home.  Since childhood I have been afflicted with the inability to remember someone in life once seen in death, and I was determined to cling to the memories of my uncle as I had last seen him, happy and alive on the beach in Negril, Jamaica, offering me a freshly-caught lobster and a slice of lime.  I wanted no part of seeing him in the stillness of death, and it was my other uncle who understood that more than anyone else.

I returned to Canada two days after I left it.  Clearing Immigration and Customs was much less dramatic than my landing.  It was explained to me, although I already knew this, that these two days would be added back to my residency obligation as I had left the country alone.  I was still floating in that odd surreal fog that seems to surround a person when their life takes a sudden turn, and felt no particular need to say I was already aware of this.

I went back to work and life has continued in its usual fashion since then.  The winter was a long one.  As February and March slipped by, I began to feel a restlessness and urgent need for warmer days.  I had hopes that April would bring warmer days, and the start of Daylight Saving Time made me feel even more keenly that it had to get warmer, as I lost an hour of sleep in the name of more daylight hours.  Still, it did not get warmer, and G and I seemed to argue more often about my need to raise the temperature in the house until I felt more comfortable.

When it snowed on the 12th of May, Mother's Day, I almost broke down in tears.  It was quite more than enough, I was feeling a great deal of unhappiness.  Everything bothered me, and it seemed as though I had no filters and couldn't keep it from spilling over into my relationship with G.  Arguments over little things became even more frequent, and even our impending third anniversary couldn't bring us closer.

Finally, towards the end of May, the temperatures began to rise, and with them my spirits.  The snow finally all melted away, the city began cleaning the streets of the rock salt and sand, grass began appearing and trees began filling out with leaves.  The family tree in our backyard bloomed, and our anniversary approached.

We celebrated our third anniversary by staying the weekend at a bed and breakfast resort some way up Highway 17, heading west towards Sault Ste Marie.  I spent time on a lake in a canoe for the first time in my life, and did not freak out too much.  G was quite at home on the water, I saw a new side of him, and though we still had many rocky moments during that week, we came back together in celebration of our love.

 

 

 

The next event of significance was my 37th birthday, and I was treated to dinner by G this year in celebration.  I was happy that we could just spend time together, and at work some effort was made to make it a nice day, which I appreciated.

In the beginning of August, I accomplished a goal I set myself as part of my timeline for my first couple of years in Canada: I earned my driver's license.  Quite frankly terrified, I went to Thessalon, rather than take the test here in E.L.  My driving instructor felt that I would find it less intimidating to do the test where I was unknown and had less chance of feeling like I was making a fool of myself.  I made at least major blunder, but only one, as the examiner passed me.  I was still in shock on the way home, even as I held the paper in my hands.

I have been growing and progressing in my job.  With just under a year in, I have been trained to act in place of the head of my section, and been taken on as a permanent employee with benefits, although still part-time and not full-time/salaried.   I think that has been a goodly amount of progress for a year, I have put myself out to learn all I can and gain as much experience as possible, and can see myself continuing to grow.  It's not what I did before, but it can form a foundation, I think.

Over the summer we have done some entertaining, so far as we are able.  We have had friends to visit for Canada Day weekend in July, and this Labour Day weekend as well.  With only 3 weeks to the beginning of the fall, there is almost a sense of mourning in comments I have heard recently, as everyone turns their minds to the upcoming fall and winter.   As the trees are already changing colours, and have been since I went to take my drive test (when temperatures plunged in that week to such frankly unseasonable lows that I had to wear a sweater at least once!), many are the comments that winter 2013/14 promises to be a long, cold one.

This time around, I have resigned my mind to the need to wear warmer clothes, even at home, rather than adjusting the temperature in the house.  Quite frankly, after seeing our gas bills for the end of the fiscal year (August), I can now understand G's consternation every time I fiddled with the temperature gauge!  Now that I am taking a more active role in managing our finances, I find myself constantly on the lookout for various ways to save on our bills.

There are a great many more bills to be concerned with here than I ever had in Jamaica, or know of anyone having.  Where before there used to be just light, water, rent/mortgage, cable, telephone, internet and the odd credit card, here you have to add municipal taxes, natural gas and water heater rental.  I have actually created a spreadsheet to keep track, and bought myself an agenda, which I used to have but didn't get this year as it seemed unnecessary.  No longer do I deem this unnecessary, I need the sense of control being able to track everything daily gives me.  I feel more useful to G this way.

Tomorrow is Labour Day, and I will spend the day in my time-honoured fashion: doing nothing much.  I laboured long and hard today, as I usually do on Sundays, to make the house ship-shape and presentable.  Tomorrow, I hope to start a reading project that should take me the rest of the year.  I have been getting back into my reading, and taking time to focus on my need for solitude and reflection, respecting my introvert tendencies.

From here on out, I should be scheduling posts on a weekly basis.  Agenda in hand, I shall have the entry looking back at me, waiting to be ticked off as "done", and that should hold me more accountable.  With four months left in the first half of my second year in Canada, I hope to be better at recording the events I experience.

Fall and Winter, Part 1.

Yes, I know, it's been forever since I updated this blog.  Forgive me, it's been eventful around here since October.  Nevertheless, I will share a condensed version.

The fall arrived in spectacular, glorious colours.  I took many photos, as I have been fond of this time of year in North America since I was first exposed to it in New York as a teenager.  With the fall also came cooler temperatures and the necessity of beginning to dress a lot warmer.  Where to G the descent in the temperatures felt gradual, to me it was shockingly sudden.  One day it was merely cool, soon I was cold.  I soon learned a salutary lesson: as someone new to Canada, it is important to dress to make myself comfortable, not try to dress as I saw others (i.e. Canadians) dressing.

The first snowfall came in October.  October!  Many people commented that this was much closer to normal for northern ON than previously mild fall trends, and they fully expected a "normal" winter for 2012/2013 than had obtained in previous years.  I heard this with some trepidation, but I listened to G's advice when it came to dressing, and stayed comfortable.

Here are some photos from September and October:

Yep, I went from brilliant, beautiful, bold colours to dustings of snow literally overnight.  That first snowfall didn't last past the end of the day, but it was a sign of things to come.

Around the end of October, another significant event in the life of any newcomer came to pass for me: I got a job.  Finally, at long last after 3 months of searching, of sending out resumes and being resolutely ignored, of attending interviews and being politely dismissed, I finally was accepted into the Canadian workforce.   Oh, it's nothing like what I used to do in Jamaica when I left, I'm basically back to square one career-wise, but it's a start.  I was once again earning income rather than being totally dependent on G for even my "pin money", and it felt marvelous.   I had and still have a lot to learn, I have had to swallow my pride numerous times over being corrected on things I would never have thought anyone would assume I didn't know, but I have learned to accept that what I don't know is more than what I do know, so it is best to listen and take the lessons as they come.  Some are easy, because I know them already, others are hard, because things are different here, in some surprising ways very different, and making assumptions is foolish no matter where in the world you are.

November would herald even colder temperatures, and by then I was fully dressing in layers of clothing to stay warm, even as G looked on in tolerant amusement.  One rainy afternoon in Sudbury I finally had enough of cold feet in shoes, and purchased a pair of boots rated for -40C temperatures, and put them on as soon as I was out of the store.  I have been wearing those shoes very nearly everywhere since I purchased them.

It is important to learn the art of layering, so that by the time fall and winter roll around you are able to dress comfortably.  Layers start from the skin out, and the rule of thumb, to my mind, for anyone like me new to these temperatures is that too many layers is better than not enough.  You can always shed layers when you have too many, it's when you haven't enough that things can get miserable.

For me, it works like this: I start with my unmentionables (of course) then add the first layer over these of tights (thick woven tights or thermal tights or regular tights, depending on how long I expect to be exposed to the cold and what I expect to be wearing over top of them) and a camisole.  I usually tuck my cami into the waistband of my tights to form a continuous layer, thereby leaving less skin exposed.  The next layer consists of a thin, long-sleeved t-shirt, again either thermal or simply cotton depending on the temperatures I expect to be exposed to.  The next layer is my outer clothing, typically a pair of pants and a sweater (preferably turtleneck or cowl neck).  I have acquired quite the sweater collection now, I find them indispensable.  My colleagues find it amazing that I can wear sweaters indoors, I find it amazing that they can wear cap sleeved shirts and dresses.

The final layer is outerwear.  It is quite important to have suitable outerwear in northern ON, what works in southern ON simply will not do here much of the time.  Baffin, Sorel, Choko, The Northern Face and Columbia, those are the brand names most often seen in these parts.   A ski parka and a mid to full length down coat are basic, also ski pants, thick socks, good gloves and tall boots.  While purchasing these items even on sale can run you into the hundreds of dollars, they are essentials that will be used year after year, so it is important to invest in high quality purchases.  I received a number of these items as early Christmas presents, and the weather obliged me with an opportunity to gear up and go outside in them.

Yep, that's me doing a snow angel.  Notice G bought me the suspender-type ski pants, rather than the ones secured at the waist.  I greatly like this style, as it allows me to form a layer that continues under my ski jacket, and the jacket itself can be cinched in at the waist to minimise air flowing up underneath it.  Not too sure how I feel about the balaclava, although I will say from experience that it comes in handy when you are outside trying to shovel snow even while it's still snowing!

To be continued in part 2: Christmas and a New Year.