Letting It

Blizzards: good or bad?
One the one hand: beautiful, romantic, dramatic. They bring neighbors outside, shoveling side by side and exchanging grumble-like comments. They support snowmen and sled runs. They create pink night skies. They give you the chance to walk down the middle of a normally busy, now deserted road and climb to the top of a 15-foot snowbank to take in the emptiness around you. And if the timing is right, they cancel work/school.

Okay, the other hand: shoveling, driving, digging your car out after it's been plowed in, cancellations, cabin fever, more shoveling... It's snowing here (again) today. A lot. It snowed last week too. A lot. And the week before that. The city has run out of places to put the snow, and seems to have resorted to dumping it all in the spot we used to park our car in. I've had to do a fair amount of shoveling, which is always followed by a mix of confusion, embarrassment and annoyance as our upstairs neighbor re-shovels the path I just made. My walk to and from the subway has become a low-stakes version of Russian Roulette: which patch of the sidewalk is covered in black ice? Which random footstep will set my flying? Which of my neighbors will see this and shake their heads in pity?

The good outweighs the bad. Sure, I wish someone had come and plowed our street before it all turned to ice, but that's part of the fun. I wish I was more motivated to go out on a Saturday afternoon and play urban explorer, but there is definite appeal in staying home and chipping away at the things you've been meaning to do forever - continue your sporadic study of German, cook more (eggplant parmesan, vegetable chowder, apple and custard pie), finish one of those big fat books you can't carry with you on the subway, watch three seasons of Battlestar Gallactica in two weeks. Okay, that last one belongs to Oliver, but I have to admit that I've watched enough with him to have developed a crush on Gaius Baltar, the brilliant but tortured scientist who unwittingly delivers the human race into the hands of the evil cylons.

The people around me are starting to turn bitter, cursing winter and making plans to do things like buy sun lamps and escape to Florida. Maybe I'll be turning that corner soon, but for now I'm enjoying things as they are. I think, at the bottom of it all, it's because my life here in Canada seems a little like a vacation. It's a pretty pathetic vacation, since it involves a 9-5, bills and real-life things like trips to the dentist, but it's a vacation all the same. There is definitely something carefree and temporary about my view of my environment. A harsh winter seems like an "experience", something to be written up and talked about someday down the road. Real life as vacation: good or bad?