Chagal4's Blog

Yeah…I can remember back in those hazy fifties when I heard Fats Domino sing that tune for the first time. I was just a skinny ass kid and I loved the song but I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. A lotta water under the bridge since then. Yesterday I was sitting here moaning about the pain from recent surgery and the perils of mixed medication when two things caught my attention. First was a news reader saying that it was “blue Monday”…and then it was Baby Doc Duvalier showing up in Haiti to help…which to my mind was a little like hearing that Satan had dropped in to the seldom visited tenth ring of Hell to see how things were going. If there was anything that signified “blue Monday” for me that was it. They say that Blue Monday is the most depressing day of the year…if you don’t take into account politics, economics, natural disasters, the neighbours endlessly barking dog, miserable days at work (assuming you have a job)and the various visitations of ill health. It’s that day when you wake up and realize that you’re in the dead of winter and there are at least two more months and more of miserable weather to come. You’ve already checked all of the cheap flight web-sites and your dreams have that sand and sun and soft sea breezes wafting over the gentle surf  feeling…and then you wake up. Some people love the winter, can’t wait for that first snow fall…a lot of people actually. I’ve never been a member of that club. Coping was the best I could manage and I got pretty good at it. Learned to ski, bought down clothes and long underwear, forced myself out the door on the coldest days. Now I’m older and I don’t feel the urge to try as hard as I used to. The winter  days I look forward to now are the ones when they say the weather isn’t fit for man or beast…I say bring it on, settle down with my favourite snacks a glass or two of sherry and a good book and check the window now and then to make sure I’m not tempted to go outside. Yesterday and today fit the bill nicely here in Ottawa. Yesterday was cold enough to freeze the verbs out of a sentence and today it warmed up a dozen degrees (always a bad sign), snowed a bit and threatened freezing rain. Now, there are few things that will make my heart turn around and run backward faster than freezing rain. For those who have never experienced it allow me to give you a cautionary tale.  Near enough to twenty years ago my lady and I being ambitious and younger, decided to move here to Canada’s capital after a short stay in Toronto (should have stayed) and, for me, nearly twenty years in Vancouver (really should have stayed). We had no kids, a nice car, and decent house close to the centre of the city. There was no garage but I could park right in front of my door so…things were cool. I knew there was going to be a lot of snow so I thought it would be a good idea to get one of those car covers…tailored to fit your personal vehicle. I looked all over Ottawa and they had none, which should have raised a tiny flag of concern…but hey. I called Toronto and sure enough they had just the thing, deluxe model, breathable, made of some new miracle fabric..kind of a subdued grey colour. I drove down to Toronto the very next weekend and picked it up. By the middle of November it had snowed a couple of times and I ran out, fitted the deluxe tailored cover on the car and watched the flakes pile up from the living room window. Come morning I went out, whipped it off and shook it…car looked like it spent the night indoors. People walking by the house smiled at me and my cover and I smiled back. Friendly town, I thought. One night the end of November here comes a freezing rain warning. This can’t be good, I thought…better get that cover up. It rained for hours…I watched from the window as that miracle fabric shaped itself in a perfect image of my car…covering it from bumper to bumper in subdued grey comfort. Then the bottom fell out of the thermometer. It turns out that “snow proof” and “water proof” are two very different things and that freezing rain soaked through that miracle fabric and formed a half inch of blast proof skin. People came from blocks away to see the ice sculpture as they always will when colossal lunacy is on display. When I could get them to stop laughing I got a full range of advice from friends and co-workers. “Try a hairdryer” they said. It’s minus twenty and I’m thinking “hairdryer?” . Where the hell do I get one that would dry off a Mammoth? The car sat there for days, a source of ridicule and embarassment that had me thinking…H-M-m-m …how about a gallon of gasoline and a match? The advice pilled up and I was beginning to think that was it for the winter…the car would come out in the spring.  And there I was sitting in the kitchen watching Lou Lou boil water for pasta when the light bulb went on in my head. Three hours and many pots of boiling water later I had my car back…had stashed that custom made, subdued grey, son-of-a-bitch, in the darkest corner of the basement (might still be there, even though we moved over ten years ago) and learned a most valuable lesson about Ottawa winters. When they say freezing rain…don’t put a cover on your car…stay indoors until it’s over…better still, try not to be here when it comes. Alas it’s too late to be elsewhere today. Could be worse…I could be in Haiti on Blue Monday watching that monster grinning at the cameras.

This entry was posted on January 18, 2011 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.