OLD BESSIE AND ME

An Alberta Clipper passed though Muskoka and old Bessie rose to the occasion!

TAKEN: FEBRUARY 19th, 2022

Like everyone else in Muskoka, we woke up Saturday morning and couldn’t see across the street. 

After a pot of hot coffee and the blizzard subsiding, my hubby began to bundle up and I immediately followed his mid-morning motivational moves. We headed out together, to tackle the hellish 13+ inches of the white stuff that had arrived; express, via Alberta.

Though I have always complained about winter in general, when it comes right down to it, I've always enjoyed shoveling snow.  You can move quite a lot of the crap with a snow scoop and prior us inheriting old Bessie, snow was always moved the old fashion way – with sheer determination and hard work. 

For the record, Bessie came to us a few years back as a gift from our buddy Myler. To accurately describe her, I would have to say she’s a lot like me. Older in nature yet has a lot of spunk and life left in her!

Just like me, she may struggle some days to get going - but at the end of it all she keeps going and going until the task at hand is completed... And this past Saturday played out exactly like that for all of us.

I started by shoveling the decks and around the front of the garage while Bessie and my man hit the long driveway straights. Boy, there was a lot of snow to move. About halfway through them making a dent in the driveway drifts, it was my turn to drive the Bess-Monster.

To give you a visual, this old girl is heavy as a tank (not that I’m not that too…) and directly under the driveway snow, was a sheet of ice from top to bottom.

 

I did OK heading uphill, as the blower motor did most of the work and I positioned my feet as if I was climbing uphill on cross country skis. Coming back down was another story. I just gripped the handles and focused on staying standing up as if I were snowboarding. 

Trust me, gliding down the driveway ice behind Bessie was far easier and safer than trying to walk. All I could think to myself was thank goodness for my figure skating point of balance and my elementary school super slider snow skate experience. In one word… WICKED!

After hubby and I tagged team off again and he headed back toward the top of the drive, I held up my phone and snapped our photo. What I am sharing is exactly what I captured, and there are a couple of things I love which this photo illustrates.

Firstly, that teamwork really does make the dream work.. AND, that I absolutely LOVE that the blowing snow hides my Saturday morning big ass bedhead, as well as the fact that I am not wearing any makeup. 

What can I say?

...Except our old girl Bessie brings out the absolute best in me!

WATER WAS DEFINITELY CHILLED

When I rose at 5am this morning, I immediately thought of my very good friend Sean. His standard joke for times when there was an extreme cold warning in effect was: ‘It was so cold outside this morning, that I saw a lawyer walking down the street with his hands in his own pockets.’ The reason that little ditty makes me smile’s because he was a lawyer. Taken too soon, I truly miss him. May he forever rest in peace.

My point being, when I woke up this morning it was -44C outside with the windchill, so I ended up staying home. Not because I couldn’t have gone to work, rather because our home was built in the late 1980’s, we have water intake pipes that run along an outside wall inside the garage. 

Again, nothing life altering, except the last time I heated the garage for the weekend during a deep freeze, the three day hydro bill was 600 bucks. Suffice is to say, I don’t take home 600 beans a day and this sucker's here 'til at least Sunday; so I was unanimously elected to keep the ice water running for the day.

It’s been a brutal week. After my December infusion of vitamin D, I usually manage to hit the ground running in the new year. You know, when most of the gloom is gone and the snow is bright white. But because the weather's been so cold, the only exercise I have managed to get is shoveling the driveway twice. (Noting that exercise, combined with my light therapy, is key to me keeping my seasonal affective disorder in check.)

Oh, my stupid SAD. Now that I'm aware, it makes me so very conscious of my overall ability to be a big hairy bitch this time of year. I have to be so regimented about my routine it feels like I should have been cast in the movie Groundhog Day.

At this point, I am just constantly grinding my teeth for the first of February to arrive, then, it will be full steam ahead to spring. I don’t expect you to understand if you don’t suffer but it is absolutely maddening that I feel that I can't wake up. I am serious when I admit that I just want to hibernate and it has nothing to do with being depressed.

I read somewhere that people don’t notice if it’s winter or summer if they are happy. 

I call bullshit. I’m very happy, yet I have enough common sense to know that when the hair in my nose freezes instantly it’s winter, and when my brain freezes fast it’s definitely summer; and said freeze is usually caused by a gigantic serving of tiger tail ice cream.

Ah, now I’m craving junk food. I can’t win! At least my snow shoveling photo ROCKS!!

Glass half full... right?!

Who other than me likes to shovel snow? I know, I suck!
TAKEN: JANUARY 3rd, 2018

SOME VERY SIMPLE ADVICE

Well, for the first time in I don’t know how many years, I stayed upright and officially rang in the new year at midnight last night. I didn’t get home much after that but for some very strange reason, I stayed in bed until after noon. Wait, I’ll come clean. The reason I stayed in bed wasn’t strange, it was thanks to my mother-in-law and her super special Sangria recipe!

Anyway, when I finally found myself vertical, I headed outside to shovel. I couldn't help but realize that this had been the busiest holiday season for me in at least a decade. Part of me feels the lack of snow helped make me more mobile, another part of me's resigned myself to the fact that I am just more settled. No bullshit calendars to deliver, no ads that needed to go to press; just a week of some much needed me/we time.

Like some, I’m not a ‘new year, new me’ kind of person. I am who I am and I'm okay with that. Don’t make resolutions, never have. I will admit that there are superficial things I wish I could change but the truth of the matter is that I am generally okay with the aging process. The hard reminders come via my pups. As Dot struggles to do the stairs, I know that'll eventually be me. As I sit here and admire the snow falling from the sky, my personal thoughts fall in line with, “…just please don’t let me fall and break a hip this winter!”

My perfect New Years Day office view!
(TAKEN: JANUARY 1st, 2016)

Giggles aside, I wanted to share that I drew and posted a graphic on Linkedin (that I retweeted) this morning. It read:

Follow you heart. 

Just be sure to take your brain with you!

With that very simple bit of advice forming my 2016 mantra, I DO intend on following my heart this year.

I AM going save every penny I can to travel more, and I AM going to embrace every single opportunity of adventure that presents itself. 

As I sit here writing and daydream about all the things I am going to do in 2016, the first thing on my list of things to accomplish is staring right at me in the face. I need to immediately get my ass outside and bring in the two lawn chairs I left out on the patio. 

Happy 2016 everybody. I'm truly looking forward to a very exciting year!!