Today you get two posts in one day. There is a reason for this: I am the MASTER of procrastination. Add your name to my list if you, too, want to learn how, I’ll send you a book. 🙄

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Once, when I was in my 20s, a girl from my Toronto office and another one from the Montreal office went down to San Antonio for a business trip/training session.

It was January, I believe. We dressed warm to leave the house and trekked to the airport with bulky luggage where we endured de-icing delays before finally flying off to sunny Texas.

After we checked in to our hotel, we went to walk around the grounds. The sun was out, it was warm, and we didn’t have to spend twenty minutes getting dressed in layers.

There was an outdoor pool that looked quite inviting. So we went back in, changed into bathing suits, and sat on the deck chairs enjoying the late afternoon warmth.

Two other girls from our company came by and introduced themselves. They were from an office in Florida.

Both were dressed in long pants, long shirts, and light jackets.

“It’s chilly today,” they said. “Aren’t you ladies cold in your swim wear?”

Ha.

Texans and Floridians didn’t understand how a trio from Canada can sit pool side in the 22° C degree weather (71 °F).

lol

This little historical anecdote popped into my head as I sit here sheltering myself from the onslaught of the so-called Polar Vortex. Everyone and their grandmother is All Up In Arms about the Polar Vortex.

Sigh.

I’ll tell you something. I actually happen to like living in a part of the world that experiences four distinct seasons. Keeps things interesting.

Being Canadian, I do admit that weather does have a large part in the conversational aspects of daily life here. I mean, there’s so much to talk about… It’s too hot, too cold, been too hot or cold too long, it’s too wet, not enough rain, the humidity will kill me in the next five minutes, we haven’t seen the sun in three weeks, why isn’t it snowing, we have too much snow, the slush and ice is treacherous to drive in…blah blah blah! 😊

The Polar Vortex however takes a special kind of personality to tolerate. For us hockeymoms already spending oodles of time in cold arenas, you know it’s cold out if you actually want to go INSIDE an arena to keep warm.

By the way, that will be me tonight. Because that is what I do on Saturday nights. I go to the rink.

Me = Party Girl

😂😂😂

Well it’s January. It’s winter. It’s snowing. It’s cold. So what. But don’t worry, I’ll bitch and complain about winter taking too long to get out by the time we get to April… 😜

I do have to admit though that there are a few things that I don’t miss about the hot and humid summer weather here in the Greater Toronto area. My kitchen has been void of both flies and fruit flies, which seem to find their way in no matter how dense our mosquito barriers are in our windows. Never mind that a squirrel broke through the mosquito netting in the kitchen window and left a gaping hole…I fixed it with clear masking tape; remind me in the spring to get it repaired.

blah

Other things to enjoy about the Polar Vortex that you Southerners will never likely know is the bliss of an electric blanket. I pre-warm up my bed at night time and then, when I get into it, and it feels all warm and comfy, I gotta tell you, there’s nothing quite like it. I may increase my time in bed just for that reason. 😉

Then, there’s Hygge. I know some people don’t understand what it means, but trust me, this is a thing invented by the Danish and it MAKES SENSE, even for those of us who do not have a fireplace. Hygge means mood of coziness, it means feeling warm and comfortable and content while inside. All things that we tend to gravitate toward when the weather outside is less than bearable.

Sometimes we don’t have much snow in the winter time even though we do live in Canada. Not all places have snow all the time up here, believe it or not. Buffalo, for example, about an hour and a half away from Toronto, gets much more snow than we do because of something called Lake Effect. There have been times when all regular business in Buffalo was on hold, or canceled, due to massive amounts of snow, while we here in Toronto navigated around too much road salt due to ice, not snow.

Another thing about the Polar Vortex is that snow sometimes arrives before the dip in temperatures does. Kids in particular love it when it snows, and no one feels the cold when they’re racing down hills in plastic, saucer-shaped sleds. Us adults don’t mind the white fluffy stuff either. I mean, it looks so pretty, and it hides all the icky brown frozen landscape. Ridiculous Woman describes it much more eloquently than I do. Just be careful that snow doesn’t kill you.  ❄🙃❄

And lastly, if you own a Samsung fridge and you have to endlessly defrost it just to keep it running at optimal temperatures, certainly cold temperatures outside makes it easier to manage. Not everyone has backup fridges in garages or basements, and even if they do, keeping a cooler right outside a door near the kitchen makes things slightly less challenging. Never mind that you want to take an ax to the fridge and hack it to death…Lucky for me this hasn’t happened in the last couple of weeks, hope I didn’t jinx it now. 😮

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to make some tea, and suggest to my girl child that she should bake something. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some home baked goods? That’s surly part of the Hygge, no?