January 6th 2016
During the last few centuries, up to the first decades of the 20th century, weather represented mostly a very polite subject for conversation. Nowadays, at least here in Canada, winter brings the topic back in usual conversations and everybody finds a growing interest in discussing the weather with passion. That’s not because it would be a polite subject of discussion or something that would fill a pause in conversation but because weather governs everything: habits, moods and actually the entire life during the cold season but not only. The temperature is discussed every day, in the family, with friends or at work. Wind is another topic that holds a high rank in various oral exchanges. The shortness of the day claims also a proud place in the daily interludes. I, for one, am very fond of discussing the temperature. I don’t mind the lack of natural light and if the wind doesn’t really bite, then I don’t have anything against it. However, the temperature hunts me and honestly, befuddles me. How can it be warmer after nine or ten at night than it was during the day? And I don’t speak about a degree or two, but sometimes it may get to a difference in temperature of about 10 degrees. Yes, I know it is about air waves but anyway, it still bothers me. Weather is merely inconstant and plots to ruin my well-laid plans all the time. I never quite manage to dress accordingly. If it is cold and I bundle up, then it gets warm all of the sudden and I feel like suffocating. If I have the feeling the temperature is mild and I don’t bother with a sweater under my coat or a hat, then suddenly it gets so cold that I hardly keep my teeth from chattering. The only good thing in this anomaly is that if in the morning I find the strength to fight Rex in order to put his coat on and take him out, in the evening, when I am already tired, I don’t have to dig for the remnants of my vitality. It is warm enough that I can take him out without having to go through his entire ritual of wriggling and running in a circle so that I could not catch him to dress him up. In the morning, I am usually the only one up very early. Even the dog looks at me with reproach and you can see he tries to make himself smaller so that I do not get any ideas of taking him out of his bed. Of course, that lasts only till I am at the door of the bedroom because then he becomes very lively and decides he has to go downstairs with me. As he can’t climb down the stairs, he is afraid that I’d forget about him, probably, and he prefers to wake up than to be left behind. However, this morning was out of the ordinary. I am pretty sure I never mentioned that my daughter has a cat – it’s a calico cat. She looks quite weird because of the multitude of colors. It’s like someone plunged her in a vat with swirling colors and everything got caught on her fur. Nevertheless, her personality is what makes her stand out. She’s the most stubborn cat ever. Actually, I think that in this house, with my exception (see I can be modest as well), everybody is stubborn and fixed in their habits and everybody thinks that the named habits should get precedence before everything else. The problem is that all these habits clash. The cat wants attention exactly when my daughter has to write an essay or when she watches a movie. And attention doesn’t mean just a pet on the head. She wants someone to play with her and especially the person that is the busiest at that moment. The dog wants to play with the cat, regardless that the cat wants to sleep – after playing all night long in the living room downstairs, of course she needs to recharge. He doesn’t take well to rejection and she doesn’t take well not to be left to her own devices. That brings up a lot of noise: screeching, barking, spitting and so on. Anyway, I digress. This morning, the cat decided to bring a gift to my daughter: a spider - and it was alive and kicking. To understand how much that gift meant to my daughter, especially when she was brutally woken up to receive the present, you should know that she has one huge phobia: she can’t stand spiders, anything else but spiders. That’s one of the reason she decided never to visit Australia, regardless how tempting the continent is. So this morning I didn’t need my alarm clock. The cat’s gift worked as well as the alarm, only a little earlier. Of course, it was an alarm with echoes, because it triggered shrieks from my daughter, barking from my dog, meowing from the cat whose feelings were very hurt when she saw that her gift was flown away. Only the spider was happy: he retreated and watched the evolution of the events from the edge of a desk where it landed. Finally, everybody calmed down, I went to make my coffee, carrying the dog with me, and as it seemed not bad outside, I decided to drink my coffee in the yard. It seemed a good idea at the time, however, a squirrel, and I bet it was the same from the other day, plopped itself on a branch in my tree which sent Rex in a frenzy of barking – happy hour for all my neighbors. His barking made other dogs around bark, so soon we had a concert of barking that woke up the entire neighborhood. Only the squirrel wasn’t unsettled. It went on staying on the same branch, looking from above at the mutt and muttering something there in its language. I tried reasoning, then threatening, and then I played the card: I’ll leave you outside and close the door behind me – nothing worked. He stopped only when he considered that his job was done. After such a noisy a morning – I prefer my mornings quiet so that I could gather my thoughts, I had to go through half a day with a raging migraine, but thank God, by the afternoon it turned into a mild headache and I could have some more work done. Right now it is just a memory – not pleasant, but if we don’t take the days as they are, where would we be? However, I learnt a valuable lesson: don’t go out in the yard before checking the tree. If there’s a squirrel there, drink your coffee inside, it’s the best strategy. There was another valuable lesson that I learnt today: never go on the balcony between 8:55 and 9:10 pm. It seems that at that time, lots of planes leave from Toronto, and all of them cross the skies above my house and as Rex has lately developed a hate policy against them, I’d better keep him inside during that interval or my neighbors would present me with a petition to move out soon. I was wondering about something. It is something I saw in the past but today I was reminded about. I went shopping. There’s a nice supermarket close to my townhouse and besides the fact that everything is quite fresh, the prices are low, lower than in other supermarkets of the kind. When I left, I saw a couple leaving with the cart. They didn’t bother to carry what they bought. They simply took the cart away. I saw several such carts around the condominium. Some of them are even under lock so that no one else could steal them. It is like a trend: everybody must have a cart in front of the house. However, the question is: does that supermarket order new batches of carts all the time or do the employees wander around to find the missing carts and that’s why some people keep them under lock? I didn’t dare to ask. I don’t think my neighbors would take lightly hearing such a question. But I still wonder. Wouldn’t you? Well, besides work and playing sheriff in the house keeping the peace, I manage to write the ten pages I proposed to myself, to surf the internet looking for things I have no need of and I visited my Facebook account to see if anybody said anything. Bored, I decided to take one of those tests or games - I am not sure how they are called. It said that with my profile picture they could guess who my soulmate is. Now, I said to myself, what do I have to lose? It’s true, though, that my profile picture represents actually a Birman cat. But why not try? Imagine: the soulmate for the picture was an extremely muscled man with those penetrating eyes meant to make your heart skip a beat. Honestly, I don’t think the cat would have appreciated the soulmate indicated for her. Anyway, it was funny to see. I can’t believe my eyes: it’s still half an hour till midnight and I finished writing. Every single evening I had to rush to finish before midnight and today, I am quite early. I am sure tomorrow I will be back on the rush. But today it is good, quite good. Not so good, my computer crashed, I had to restart it and here I am almost at 12 at night. Have a good day, wherever you are!
2 Comments
Maria Basca
1/7/2016 07:39:20 am
During my first year in Canada I always used to wonder why were all women carrying three bags with them, some of them would pull a small suitcase with them. After a while Inrealozed that if you wanted to be prepared for the weather the three bags were a MUST. Since I refuse to carry all that stuff around, I am always either too cold or too wet and yes...weather became one of my favourite subjects !
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Roxana
1/7/2016 04:55:47 pm
I prefer to travel light. I can't stand carrying all sorts of things with me.
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ROXANA NASTASEBorn sometime in the past century, living in the 21st century. https://www.ebookstage.com/welcome/NTYyNzY=/
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