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The first time I visited Ottawa, it was November. November in Ottawa is the color of wet cement. Trees are leafless, stark in the fields of corn stubble. Snow lays on the sides of the highway like dust, collecting dismally in hard to reach corners. Farmhouses, once vibrant red, are bleached and grey, as if the salt from the road had coated them as it has the cars we pass.
Nevertheless, we're in a warm car, and I'm in a new country, with a new friend. Everything is exotic to me, from the border guard to the bilingual signs to the idea that we have a blanket and candles in the car in case of a breakdown. A light snow falls, and swirls in our headlights. Chris tells me that a driver can become hypnotized by the snowflakes caught in the bright lights, and I let my eyes focus on the bright white show until the road, the cars, the world disappear.
And then we're in the suburbs, hanging up coats, rubbing cold fingers. The miasma of November is far away outside. Here in the house colors are rich like the warm brown of rye with sweet vermouth and cherries. And in the kitchen, there is an entire turkey dinner, with stuffing and potatoes and carrots and gravy, even though in Canada Thanksgiving was over a month ago, and tonight is just a Thursday in November. This is the way Mr. and Mrs. Wilson welcome me, this new person, just a friend from university with no where to go for the American holiday.
I live here now, and have for almost 4 years. Yet I still feel foreign. As a Californian, the simplest things like the fact that you should put on your mittens after you button your coat escape me. As an American, I'm still getting used to being an expatriot, looking back at my homeland through the eyes of the rest of the world.
So welcome to canuckifornia.ca. For those of you familiar with my old personal site, you can expect the content here to be similar. I'll be blabbing away about my life, activities, and perceptions of Ottawa. I think that's all for now. Imagine a big banner, some giant scissors, and a high school brass band. We're open for business.
I've been listening to a lot of Lyle Lovett lately. He sings with a pathos that nearly moves me to tears. He speaks to the silent sound of true companionship and how the world can seep into your skin if you let it. Half his songs are about good coffee early in the morning. Anyone that knows the essential nature of coffee and early mornings steals my heart immediately. I've already informed my husband that I'd likely leave him if Mr. Lovett would have me.
On Monday and Tuesday this week I drove to Montreal each morning, on the road before 6:00. Driving eastward on the highway, the sky lightened and the edges of the world were slowly drawn in. I watched the sun rise over the snow drifts and the black highway slicing through the countryside.
Everytime I see the sun rise over a highway, I am reminded of our honeymoon. We left Albuquerque at 4:30 one morning, determined to reach my aunt and uncle's house in Dallas by dinnertime. Chris slept in the passenger seat while I cranked along the interstate, music playing low. Sunrise in New Mexico. Colors shot into life in the sky around the voluminous storm clouds. The plateau glowed green and golden, as if the sun were rising from within the soil itself. I had it all to myself.
The morning is an introvert's sanctuary. In the morning you can escape from everyone else; all other conscious beings are like-minded shadows that shrug back into their corners with an unspoken pledge to silence. The morning is the demesne of the written over the spoken, the tasted over the heard. Today I'm in my living room. The fire is on. I'm listening to the house creak. Coffee is fresh and hot. Behind me the window moves from black to silver and the day announces itself with the whisper of feet crunching snow.
Today is the third morning this week that I've seen the sun rise. Now, granted, this being the frozen northland, the sun doesn't come up all that early in the winter, but it's still a bit of a delight. Perhaps I can add that to my small but growing list of reasons that the winter isn't too interminable: there's a better chance you'll be up to see the sun rise.
Could this picture be any more touching? Full story here, but really, the picture is all that needed to be said.
One of the things I've learned to like, or at least count on, about winter, is that it is very handy for keeping things cold. Like, for example, let's say you're going to have a party. And, hypothetically, your refridgerator is full of condiments that should have been thrown out months ago. Also, hypothetically, the "breakfast nook" off your kitchen is an uninsulated shed structure. And, finally, it happens to be cold enough outside to freeze snot. Should these conditions all converge, I highly recommend turning what was once a room in your house into a refrigerator with a view. Be careful, because the sodas on the floor will freeze and explode. Lastly, if you still run out of room, remember that snowbanks make excellent keg-coolers.
Saturday, February 14th was the occasion of Winter Sucks 9. For those of you unfamiliar with the tradition, (and I'm not sure who that would be, except Cheshire, since I'm pretty sure all my other readers are related to me) the Winter Sucks party has been providing me with an ample supply of tequila every February for nine years now. Early on it was a mild affair, with a few friends getting together to thaw their extremities over salt and lime. Since I moved to Canada, the party has reached epic proportions. I'm not sure if this is due to the uninhabitable nature of Canadian winters, or the fact that most Canadians I know relish an excuse to have a good drink.
I had a really good time at WS9. Some of you who attended may not believe that. As usual, I spent most of the time cooking, serving, or hiding in a quiet corner. It is an odd thing, I know, and many friends inquired as to my ok-ed-ness. As an introvert bordering on misanthropism, I am an accidental host. I am indebted to the Handsome Lanky Husband for introducing me to the joys of watching other people be happy.
Saturday was also Valentine's Day. I've known the HLH now for over 12 years. We've lived together for seven, been engaged for almost four, and married for two. It's a strange place to be, for all at once we're newlyweds, and also peering at the seven-year-itch, and also an old married couple well within the comfort zone. We didn't really celebrate Valentines this year. I feel a bit guilty. I didn't even get him a card. Instead of dinner, we had 50 people over to drink a keg.
The guilt subsides quickly. Tonight we are sharing, for no special reason at all, a very good bottle of Chateau Pape Clement -- a gift from his brother. HLH is sitting here beside me, reading a book, and the fire is on, and I'm typing. And we're not talking, but being. And I want to be this way for as many years as I'm alive.
Some of us while away the deep freeze by mulling hot wine and then drinking it. A lot. Others take a chainsaw to a chunk of ice and create a kangaroo or seascape or a canoe full of penguins or RAAAAR!. It is only a block from my office, but in this weather I count it as getting out. There was a dragon-slayer (with breasts), native dancer (no breasts, but with wings), fuzzy mammoth (with tusks), giant squid!, and centaur (ahem, with breasts).
Because the must frustrating aspect about this toilet-buying is that we already have a perfectly good toilet. But somehow, for some reason, the toilet is grey. Grey like the concrete Jersey walls between lanes on the highway. Grey like sewer water. Grey like, I can't even think of another thing in this world that is so horribly uncolored. Grey like you took all the colors of play-doh and let a three-year-old mash them all together until it was one big lump of grey. It is the color of despair.
I can't even think of an era when the grey toilet would have been in style. If the toilet were harvest gold or avocado green or even miami vice turquoise, at least then I could place it in its proper context. It might even have some kitsch appeal. But no, grey.
Who buys and installs a grey toilet?
I'll tell you who. Jim. Jim who owned the house before us. Jim who was a self-proclaimed carpenter, plumber, electrician. Jim who we curse on a daily basis. Dammit Jim. What were you thinking?
Ok so enough about the grey toilet. Today I'm buying a new one, and it will be white. The only problem with this plan is that once I start thinking about a new toilet, I realize that if I'm going to be taking out the old toilet and putting in a new one, I might as well take the opportunity to replace the nasty grey linoleum with some nice tiles. And if I'm going to do that I might as well also paint the walls. So all of a sudden I'm overwhelmed with a very large task list and I get very scared and lazy and instead of starting right in, I'm sitting here in my chair by the fire again and telling you all about it instead. Here's what I figure I have ahead of me.
First, I will go to Home Depot. Home Depot used to be an unnerving experience for me, because I was always certain I was forgetting something and would be doomed to a return trip. That was before I realized what every homeowner knows: all projects take at least three trips to HD, no matter how diligently you plan. So I'm off for my first trip to Home Depot, with a list I already know is hopelessly incomplete. Before I get there however, I have to shovel 7 inches of freshly fallen snow and defrost the car. I know that sounds like whining, but hey, I'm from California. Also, I'm hungover. Once at HD, I will wander around aimlessly for a while. Then I will spend two hours trying to decide between different shades of red paint.
I've already proven that I'm good at the part of home improvement projects that starts with the thinking and planning and ends with the buying of many items which will then sit in my basement. It's the next few steps that I need some help with. Here is the order of operations I believe I will need to follow for this project:
So I'm off to get my snow shovel and defrost the car.
I think he should bugger off and get his own damn website.
He tells me to write about how on a mid-winter day, you can look out the window at brilliant sunshine. Internally I cringe and whimper. I've lived through enough mid-winter days to know that the days when the sun sparkles blindingly off the snow are deceivingly deadly. Yes, deadly. If it's January and it looks like the most beautiful day you've ever seen, take my word for it and don't go outside.
He nags at me to write about how "if you ski at night - which is pretty much any time past afternoon coffee - the stars seem sharper than they ever can in the summer." I try to be positive, really I do. But that sentence makes me want to cry. Nighttime is anytime past afternoon coffee. The winter stars, sharp as ice chips, are quite beautiful, but I'd rather not be able to see them at 4:00.
My friend tells me to write about how Canadians stay sane in all these months. I nod, yes that's interesting. Silently I'm thinking, "lots and lots of alcohol."
But he means for me to write not about the unending evenings hiding behind a pint of Guinness, but about the outdoor activities that keep Ottawans (Ottawanians? Ottawi?) braving the cold and smiling about it. Here he almost gets me; cracks appear in the wall of my winter-hatred. Ottawa is an amazing town for activity. Even on the grimmest of days, people are outside. At lunchtime on the canal you see teenagers let out from the local high school, skating and brawling, gossiping while they spin in awkward circles. Women with all-terrain baby carriages chat and skate as if they were walking down a summer lane.
Take a 15 minute drive from the downtown core of the city and you'll find yourself in the Gatineau Park. You can leave the workday behind, leave the office and the flourescent lights and computer screens, and in the space of an hour you'll be deep in the woods, surrounded by nothing but the soft fump of snow falling from laden branches. It seems like all of Ottawa is here; the parking lots are full. But Gatineau has plenty of room for all and each group finds its way into their own wintery loneliness. Fathers tote children in sleds behind their skis. Couples ski to cabins for candlelit dinners in the warm dark. Groups of friends snowshoe around the swamps transformed by winter into rolling drifts of white. Everyone has bundled up and gotten out of the house, out of the office, out of the bars.
I don't really know how they do it. I still look at the deadened trees and feel dismal. I comfort myself with cursing and tequila. But I'm learning. Ottawa won't let me spend the winter inside.
