Nothing to be SAD about

InCivilitis: Nothingto be SAD About

It’s the beginning of March, and shit’s not funny. The darkest months of winter are technically behind us, but the tropical dampness of our requisite hot vacations are even further behind – a distant memory that seems more like foggy a tryst you imagined during a 2:00pm sugar low. All that remains from the tropical vacation is a nagging shortage of cash and a crushing avalanche of court appearances and mediations that you scheduled in the then distant future, well into the future following your hardly-earned tropical tryst.But the future is now, my friends, and the impending rush of ill-considered matters that were punted down the line are rising like warm bread. The last throws of winter are the worst.

It might be possible to deal with all those foul matters we’ve postponed, if Mother Nature, the wretched witch, would see fit to deliver some remotely seasonal warmth. It dampens the day when you wake-up to an impending sunrise, to be fooled into thinking, “it looks rather springy out there in the near daylight of early March”, only step out your door into the face of a brisk minus 20 that cuts through your chest like cheap bourbon. Of course, the delightfully pure whiteness of our December winter-scape has given way to the grey-brown glacial sheets of densely packed ice and gravel blanketing the sidewalks and gutters. Aside from an active lava flow, it would be difficult to devise a surface less friendly to pedestrians (and the hips of seniors) than the late winter glacial cover. Fortunately (?), the icy moraine is periodically broken by the emerging lumps of dog feces that are suspiciously common beneath winter’s cloak. The thawing scats emit the smell of human shame and servitude: the stench of a sick society that hides its worst beneath the veil of winter. Of course, some of the crap is off-set by the sudden appearance of the bright red blight: the seasonal Tim’s Cup, with one piece of the paper lip rolled slightly upward, bearing the season’s most common affront, “Please play again”.

No. I’m done playing. I don’t even like Tim Horton’s and yet the prospect of a free crueler, or better yet, another coffee, somehow compels me to quadruple my TiHo’s intake during Roll Up season. One year, during law school, I won four coffees in a row and by the fourth I was praying that I didn’t win another. But the problem is, since you put everything off during Christmas and then your tropical vacation, you need the caffeine to get through the pile of stuff you adjourned. And since you’re drinking coffee anyway, you might was well get a Tim’s with a chance of winning ‘cause God knows Starbucks isn’t giving you anything for free. And since that vacation, you could really use a financial break. Besides, the TiHo’s is pretty close and the minus 20 weather and the moonscape sidewalk doesn’t invite a lengthy sojourn.  So let’s just get a Tim’s – my last cup asked me very nicely to play again anyway. Late winter is an asshole.

Of course, this year, during the depths of our Seasonal Affective Disorder, my wife and I promptly decided to finish our concrete basement and proceeded, like any brilliant litigator, to employ a contractor on a handshake to get things done. As such, the normal ugliness of the season has been amplified by all the ugliness of poorly detailed construction contract.The notion was that winter with two kids under two was resulting in some serious cabin fever that could be resolved by increasing our space and providing more room for “ripping around”. Of course, winter is nearing its end and we have no finished space yet, a meaningless budget and a thick coat of dust throughout the house. At one point, a “minor adjustment” to the position of the shower drain resulted in a grand excavation that looked more like the search for King Tut’s tomb.

The capstone to this season’s escapades was our quick“in-and-out” voyage from Saskatoon to Calgary to procure some “cheap” fixtures from Sweden’s favourite hex-key furniture hawker. IKEA ate more than three hours of my life and made a mockery of our budgeted intentions. Amidst the labyrinth of showrooms, we managed to avoid the horse-meat delights of the cafeteria, but risked low blood sugar and dehydration as a result. Of course,while we shopped, Mother Nature, in her late winter rage, descended on Calgary,pelting it with Fernie-like powder for hours, which paralyzed the town. We got stuck at a Sandman Inn across the street from IKEA for the extra night – and one more day away from the office, which was extremely helpful during the season of catch-up. If you need cupboards, you should probably just buy them in Saskatchewan.

As my wife and I quietly mulled dinner during the deepest throws of late winter this week, our eldest child, at just weeks over two years of age, continued his Ghandi-esque hunger strike, which seems to be aimed not at the realization of democratic freedom, but at taking his food to the front room. Following a very vocal and physical display of non-violent resistance that saw him writhing on the floor, and our continuing indifference to his tantrum, silence became the room. As we quietly chewed, our child very quietly and purposefully removed his socks. As his mother was turned, attending to the baby, he very precisely and resolutely placed his socks on top of his mother’s food on her plate and slowly backed away. It was the strangest, most curious display of defiance I had ever witnessed. And when my wife turned around, we looked to each other momentarily, and then attempted to contain our laughter.We knew that laughing at our child’s actions was poor patenting – it would only encourage him. But damn it was funny. At that point, we grabbed a pricey bottle of wine from the shelf and tore into it on a fine Tuesday night.

 To date, we have no idea what implored our child to such an odd act of rebellion – it made no sense. But frankly, it was hilarious. And I have to say, he’s continued his streak with our potty training efforts, wherein he decided he would pee in the potty, only because he determined that the Advil syringe he played with in the bath (yes, we give our child Advil, and yes, we let him play with medical implements from time-to-time) was equally effective at extracting his own pee from the potty. A toddler armed with a pee-filled syringe is precisely what we needed. But his acts made us laugh, not only at him, but at ourselves, and our consent to late winter misery. Frankly, life isn’t that bad, despite our climatic depression. Winter is in its final throws and the rush of February and March will give way to spring very shortly, and dreams of summer weekends on the water will come to fruition. The disputes of this month will pass, and the lazy days of summer will be upon us. I just hope our basement is done by then because we don’t have air conditioning and it would be nice to have a cool place to dwell during the sweltering heat. At least IKEA doesn’t make air conditioners.

I’m off to get a coffee… I’m due for a win.