Tag: #snow

Calico Capers #SOLC25 7/31

Despite the cold and snow, Tippy insisted that she was going out this morning. She waited in the front hall, yowling, and then, when I opened the door, she fearlessly pushed ahead of our black lab mix and went out into the world – or at least onto the porch. She is a tiny 12-year-old calico who has no business spending much time outdoors when it’s -5C (23F), but she didn’t care. She had plans.

I didn’t see her when I got back from walking the dog, but I was pretty sure I knew where she was, so I didn’t worry until it got close to time for our family to leave for work and school. Then, I texted the neighbours who live a few doors down.

Tippy loves this family. She hangs out with them and their two daughters quite a lot. When all our children were little, she used to follow first our boys and then their girls to the bus stop. Now she just seems to enjoy the extra love.

A few minutes after our first exchange, they texted again.

Which is how I found myself tromping through the snow to our neighbour’s house when I should have been on my way to work. Two workers were sitting in a pickup truck in the driveway. They glanced at me, but didn’t seem to think much of my early morning visit. When I got inside, Tippy was refusing to leave, so I had to take off my boots and head upstairs to help catch her.

Once we had her, I went back downstairs and tried to slip on my boots while holding a squirming calico- but there really is no way to slip on good winter boots and there’s certainly no way to do it while wrangling a cat – so my neighbour tried to help me out by crouching down to help me get my feet in. At this point, a few construction workers poked their heads out from the bathroom they were working on to see what all the screeching and laughing was about.

I imagine they saw something like this, except with more snow and a squirmier cat:

AI generated this for me – it’s not us, but whatever

Within seconds the workers were laughing, too. I handed Tippy to my neighbour, jammed my feet in my boots, and grabbed our now-irate cat by the scruff of her neck to head out the door. There, the two men were still sitting in the pickup. Now, however, they were decidedly staring – I was disheveled, my boots really only half on, carrying a twisting, yowling, tiny calico up the driveway, through the snow, back to our house at 8:30 in the morning. I could hear them laughing as I made it to the sidewalk.

Tippy was extremely unimpressed with my rescue mission and raced up the stairs as soon as I dropped her inside the door. Now running late, I grabbed my backpack and my lunch and scooted to the minivan. I made it to work on time, but only just. And Tippy? When I got home, the little rascal tried to go outside again!

Here she is in her normal cuddly glory:

Community #SOLC25 1/31

It’s snowing again. What purports to be our front yard is currently a pile of snow so tall that shovelling more snow on top of it causes mini-avalanches either back onto the shoveller or over the top and down the other side. Across from our driveway, a snow pile significantly bigger than our minivan looms ominously. To leave home in the car, I have to do a sort of backwards three-point turn, using the snow mountain as a semi-soft reminder of how far I can go – though our recent thaw-freeze cycle means that the snow is a little more compacted and a whole lot harder than it was a week ago. Our street was due for snow clearing *before* the last big dump, but each major snow storm sees the city scrambling to remove snow from the bigger roads while our little residential street slowly subsides under the white stuff.

As I leave my house to walk to a massage appointment, neighbours are already out clearing their driveways. Glenn pauses to greet me, teasing, “Here I thought you were coming out to shovel, but I suppose you’ve got teenagers for that.”

“Ha! They’re only any good if you can wait until mid-afternoon for the driveway to be cleared.” I laugh. Then I realize that Glenn is shovelling Mario’s driveway – and Mario is maybe snow blowing Glenn’s driveway? Unclear. And a guy from the halfway house – someone I haven’t met yet – is obviously helping Glenn.

“Did you all get confused about who lives where?” Everyone laughs, and we banter for a moment before I head on my way, grinning at the way our neighbourhood functions.

***

The massage therapist has a 7-month old and updates me on all the recent developments – he’s rolling both ways now, and he’ll be crawling any day now. I tell him (the father, not the baby) about my own children, and we marvel at the changes in our lives since I started seeing him a few years ago.

After the appointment, we’re still chatting while I put on my coat and boots, and his next client arrives. “I thought I recognized that voice!” she laughs, and I turn around to see a former colleague. Since I last saw her, she moved away and back, had a baby, turned 40. Social media has let us keep up a little, but here in the little office, we greet each other again.

***

And now I’m home, starting my 8th year of participating in the March Slice of Life Challenge. I have already read a few blog posts from friends (though I’ve never met them in person). I write knowing that some of my friends from as far back as elementary school will read my posts, and we’ll reach out and catch up a little. I’m anticipating a month full of moments where we’re all shovelling each other’s virtual driveways and running into each other in the comments section. Once again, I’m looking forward to this community we create with words.

With many thanks to the team at Two Writing Teachers for growing and preserving this community.

The little plow

About halfway through my drive to work, I caught myself letting my car drift gently from one lane into the other without signalling. Bad habit, I thought. The windshield wipers swished across the glass in front of me, temporarily clearing the melted snow. I signalled belatedly.

As I approached each stoplight, I pumped the brakes, aware of how long it might take me to slow down. I turned the corners with care. I noticed how much easier it was to drive in someone else’s tracks, and how I felt briefly out of control when I tried to drive in a different lane.

I’m an English teacher and a writer: I was already developing a somewhat ham-handed metaphor as I drove – carefully – through the snow. Snow driving and this school year – snow driving and hybrid learning – snow driving and equity work… I shaped the metaphor in one part of my brain even though most of my brain was occupied with getting me to school safely.

Then I saw the truck. A semi, big for the downtown streets, was paused at the corner ahead of me. Wait. Not paused; it was stuck. Or… not quite stuck, but not far from it. I was driving slowly, and now I slowed even more. As I came to a stop a good ways back, a little orange sidewalk plow skittered off the sidewalk and across the street. The driver waved and placed his little plow between two lanes of traffic and the truck, creating a nice gap to let the big rig maneuver. The semi backed up and tried again to move forward. Nothing. The plow driver waved to us again, then turned his bright orange machine so the plow was forward, ran up behind the truck and pushed. I almost laughed at the earnest effort of the little plow coming to the aid of the giant truck. We were rooting for them – and not only because we’d now missed two light cycles. Still, no luck.

Now the little plow backed up, hesitated, then scooted up alongside the truck’s cab. The plow driver gestured, and the truck’s reverse lights lit up again. I’d almost swear that little plow did a joyful little skip as it wiggled in front of the truck and started clearing the offending corner.

Safe now, I drove slowly forward, a line of cars following behind me in a gentle curve around the area – just enough to make sure the truck and its plow had lots of space – and towards the signal twenty feet in front of us. The light turned green right when I got there, but a glance in my rearview mirror showed that little orange plow up on the sidewalk again, spinning around, as the now-freed truck pulled onto the main street.

Who needs a heavy-handed metaphor when a little orange sidewalk plow comes to rescue a truck?

Image result for ottawa sidewalk snow removal
This isn’t the plow, but it could have been.
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