Generals January and February have retreated... one to go

I just happened to notice on my blog dashboard, as I waited interminably for my laptop to get with the program (it being on its last legs for the last while) and open a new post page, that this is my 599th post.

I am quite proud of that. I'm not noted for being a sticker at things that involve work or routine.

Apart from work generally, and the daily routine.

Well done, Queenie, pour yourself a glass of wine and say cheers.

Thanks, I just did.

The other cause for celebration today is that it is the 1st March, which means that February is over for another year.

I heard someone say recently on the radio that there were only three things wrong with Canada - January, February and March.

Probably. March is generally not as bad as January and February, because the days are longer and there are *warm* days. But today the universe hurled ice pellets at the front of the house all day and covered the driveway in white again. A heady combination of rain, freezing rain, and snow has us in its grips for the next couple of days.

This means that driving and walking becomes a nightmare.

However, the upside is no shovelling.

March... at least in March there is an end in sight. Easter is soonish. It is possible to get up after dawn and drive home before sunset if you work normal hours.

February is just dead. Four weeks of unmitigating cold, damp, snow, rain, freezing rain, ice and wind. You get up in the dark and shovel the previous night's precipitation off the car in minus 10 - 15 degree cold, then shiver for eight miles until the heater starts to work. Any attempt at fresh air during the day involves slipping and falling, or being blown over by the wind, or getting caught in the snow/ rain/ sleet that has decided to fall at lunchtime.

In February nobody goes anywhere, or calls anyone, or does anything. Everyone just sits home and moans about the weather and their miserable lives.

We do try to be healthy. We made an effort every weekend and we got a few hikes in, but after one particularly icy one, which did more damage to Himself's back than good, we said to hell with this till March.

I wonder if I had actually thought about the fact that Canada is the second coldest country in the world (I'm assuming this is true because the man on the weather channel said it), would I have settled here.

However, I have not been alone in hating this winter in particular: the general consensus is that this has been one of the longest winters ever, that Canada has had two crappy winters in a row and a bummer of a summer last year so WE ARE OWED.

And we - idiots that we are - we moved house in the middle of it.

Of course, we know bigger idiots who moved twice.

The people who used to own our house - the LAZY BASTINERS - as we like to call them, left us with a busted furnace, a non-functioning water softener, rooms full of animal hair, and a yard full of dog shit. We got all these issues sorted out in a few days, but we were very angry at the lack of consideration.

IT WAS JANUARY AND IT WAS -18 OUT, YOU INCOMPETENT, LAZY, SELFISH, PENNY-PINCHING SOANDSOs!!

Halifax is a small town and I will find you some day if I can ever be bothered to go in search of you at the branch of the large electronics chain where you work.

Yes, I've been noting where your mail is coming from, dude....

And when I do bother my ass some day when I have nothing better to do, you will be sorry that you decided not to care that I would have no heat for three days in mid-January, after I had spent every penny I had on your house.

When we talk about what you did very loudly in front of the entire store.

And even when I never bother to do any of this because it is too much effort on my part, it doesn't matter that I don't ever find you, because your karma will.

But enough of that... we don't really care that the people who sold the house to us were so greedy they wouldn't spend a few hundred bucks on the furnace before they left. We are used to dealing with selfish, greedy, unreasonable people. It's best just to get on with life as best you can, let those kind of people get on with their own greed until it sinks them, and hope to hell you don't get dragged down with the shipwreck.

Oh, and by the way, the reason you had to lie about whether or not the basement leaked is because you put the rain gutters up assways... once they were fixed you were telling the truth, the basement doesn't leak!

Home repair is really not your forte is it, Mr. FLAT SCREEN TV Guy.

Other than those minor mishaps, the house has been fantastic: as Accent Monkey said, at least when you move in in January you know what works. We have settled in well and we are looking forward to the end of the winter and the re-emergence of the garden.

And company of course. Lots of company.

Won't that be a novelty after the last six weeks!!