Immaculate Shopping Lennon Day goes pear-shaped

When I was growing up, 8th December was a religious holiday in Ireland (well it still is I assume). The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin. Who was conceived by Elizabeth. Who is my favourite saint. For a number of reasons I won't go into, mainly around not really wanting to be the mother of the flippin' Virgin Mary.

It was also culchie shopping day in Dublin. Which is also known as GOIN"ONNATRAINTOSEESANTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Santy is the Irish for Santa.

Then it turned into John Lennon Died Day around thirty years ago, which was too early to mean anything much to me, even though I know it's important.

Now I live in Canada it's just another day when I feel all weird and homesick and everyone else has no idea why.

I am sitting in Cape Breton International Airport as I begin to write this, but there is no wi-fi so I will post when I get home.

If I get home…

Today was a day. I am going to rename this day Queenie's realization that winter is going to happen every year till she leaves Canada Day.

I wake at 4am because Himself’s cell phone is ringing. Normally when Himself’s cell phone rings at that hour of the morning in the winter, it means there is snow on the ground. I am so sleepy I don’t figure that out this morning, even as I listen to Himself wash, dress, make coffee and get ready to leave the house. I am irrationally annoyed because he is up so early.

Above me, the neighbours German Shepherd is pounding around begging to go out for a pee.

Finally, I call out to Himself and he says, ‘there’s a foot of snow on the ground, baby, be careful driving to the airport’ and then leaves to plough it away from all the shopping malls.

After an hour’s pointless worrying about snow and driving and lateness and the complexity of my day, I get back to sleep and have a bizarre dream about my aunt and cousin from Dublin who are visiting us in Halifax, but actually the city is Florence, Italy (this is my subconscious not wanting to deal with snow, I think). And in the dream Himself is a famous artist working in scrap metal (I don’t want to know what this is my subconscious not dealing with right now).

The alarm clock doesn’t wake me up at 5.30am when it was supposed to because I have forgotten to switch it on, so when I wake up in a panic at 5.47am, my day is already pear-shaped.

It takes about 15 minutes to scrape the snow off the car, see. And I have to be at the airport for 7am.

Up. Shower. Dress for a formal workshop presentation.

Coffee. Pot full.

I put snow clothes on over proper clothes.

Tramp downstairs. Scrape snow off car.

Tramp back upstairs.

Get coffee mug, laptop, proper boots for inside.

Tramp back downstairs with an armful of stuff.

Check I have torch, blanket, safety blanket, reflector panels, etc in the car.

Defrost the front windscreen again.

Finally, I back the car out of driveway at 6.36am. Everyone else in the building is still asleep. Apart from the dog of course.

Dogs don't shovel snow though.

Not too bad on time. My day is not too pear-shaped, but pear-shaped enough.

I drive to airport in the lightly falling snow.

In the dark of course.

On unploughed roads of course.

At 60kms per hour.

Because I’m too scared to drive any faster in case I crash, or in case Himself finds out somehow that I’ve done it, and has a fit at me for being so stupid.

I still haven’t recovered from the time I tried to sneak up to Cape Breton by road in the snow last winter because I was new at my job and thought it was important and Himself KNEW I was doing that, even though he was at work, and called me on my cell on the highway and told me I was to come home now or not at all.

Himself places a care call from the plough truck.

What speed am I doing?

I tell him.

Am I in four wheel drive?

Yes.

Good.
Keep ‘er slow now.

He listens to me moan through my blue tooth device about how unfair my life is from December to March every year. And how my snow driving stomach knots are really bad this morning, etc.

Then he has to go plough more snow.

At the airport, the signs for the long term carpark are covered in snow, and I have never parked there, so I drive around in confusion for a bit, then get lucky and follow the recently arrived LTP bus to the car park.

I park the Explorer in a snow drift.

There was nowhere else.

Anyways, it’s an Explorer, for chrissakes. It’s for moments like this.

I get on the airport bus at 7.35am.

Then I realize I am still wearing my snow boots.

I apologize to everyone on the bus for delaying the bus. Get off bus. Climb over snow drift to car. Change into proper leather-soled boots. Slither back down snow drift to bus. Re-embark bus.

We drive to the Departures Lounge in the dawn glimmer.

I have to re-check-in at 7.52am because my mobile device barcode check-in foolishness is just that.

That makes it too late for the latte and muffin I’d been promising myself on the highway…

I take off my boots and my belt in the security zone because I am beeping.

I put them back on.

I sit in the Departures Lounge for one hour with no coffee.

Finally, with the permission of the ground crew, I make a break for Tim Hortons…. Starbucks is too far away, way over in the International Flights Departure Area.

I get back to Gate 6 to find everyone has boarded.

But I can take my Timmy’s on the plane.

Hooray!!

Fifteen of us sit on the commuter plane to Cape Breton for two and a half hours while every other friggin’ plane at the airport gets de-iced before us.

No wonder Cape Bretoners are pure mule.

Now I am going to be late.

Frantically, as we barrel up to the de-icer, I email how-to-facilitate-workshop instructions to a colleague in Cape Breton and beg him to save my ass.

Then we are taking off and I have to switch off my phone without knowing whether my ass is being saved.

I panic the whole way to Cape Breton, while sitting in front of the man with the worst halitosis on the planet.

I can still smell his breath.

I decide to take my Champix on an empty stomach because I couldn’t feel any more nauseous.

Actually I could.

We get to Cape Breton only an hour after the start of the workshop.

Hoo-fuckin-ray.

The single taxi parked outside the airport has nobody in it.

I run around the airport trying to find the taxi driver.

I find the taxi driver.

I impress the urgency of my trip on the taxi driver.

He tells me he’s been here since 7.30am without a fare, so he’s taking a carload.

The taxi driver takes his time rounding up a full mini-van load.

It includes halitosis man.

I get into the front of the taxi, speechless with fury.

SPEECHLESS!

The workshop venue is the last stop on the taxi route.

I throw the money at taxi-driver who throws the receipt at me.

I burst into workshop to find everyone working quietly at correct point in workshop, thanks to innate genius of my colleague.

He is more pleased to see me than I am to see him, however, and he hands workshop over to me in alacratious relief before I even get my snow coat off.

I manage to complete the workshop in only a mild state of anxiety, which eases when I realize the participants are enjoying it.

This workshop is my baby right now. Everyone must coo at it. Everyone.

My colleague drives me back to Cape Breton International Airport.

I blag my way onto the early flight home. Which is late of course.

I go to the restaurant and order sausages and pancakes and tea for my nerves.

They burn the pancakes.

How can you burn pancakes?

The plane was due in at 4pm, but it’s arrives at 5pm covered in de-icing goo.

I wonder why…

Right now, I am sitting with seven other people and the pilot on the commuter plane from Cape Breton, bowling through the winter skies towards home.

Himself has texted to say he will be home around nine, hopefully.

That means it has probably stopped snowing in Halifax. But it’s supposed to go down to minus 10 tonight, so I hope that I scraped enough snow off the car so it’s not frozen too much.

If it’s not frozen too much, I can open my car door to get my snow boots on. With my snow boots on, I can stand up long enough to haul the ice scraper out. With the ice scraper in my hand, I can scrape the ice off the windscreen and windows and car lights. With my car in compliance with the highway winter code, I can see my way out of the snow drift and then out of the car park and finally onto the highway and home.

If not, I’ll have to hang onto the door and yank at it till it opens and I fall on my ass.

Normally I don’t drink on a Monday, but all I can think of right now is that I am two hours and a snow drift away from a big glass of red wine.

I get to the airport and I find the bus and we find my car and I get the door open after a couple of yanks and I sit there until my fingers are warm enough to drive (it's now -18) and I drive home in the dark and I get home and it's HOME and then I realise...

... NOBODY'S FUCKING SHOVELLED THE FRONT DOOR STEPS.

Anyways, it only took a few minutes and now I'm inside in the warm listening to Dragon's Den and finishing this and soooo glad I'm not out in the cold.

I hates the winter....