It is snowing horizontally.

The wind here is blowing really hard, and so the snow that is falling is pushed along by the wind. So it’s snowing horizontally.

It’s crazy windy. I was woken during the middle of the night by what sounded like a freight train rushing through. Turns out it was just the wind. And today, it continues to blow. Our house sits near the top of a hill, and so when we get windy days, our house gets hit full on. Our little house of sticks shudders and shakes and creaks and whimpers.

I sympathize with the Three Little Pigs a lot more than I did when I was younger, I tell you.

Ours is a new house, and so for all intents and purposes it is bits of wood held together by screws. All there is between us and the elements is a few timbers, some blown insulation and drywall, and a bit of siding. I long for a house that I feel is sturdy enough to withstand the weather. I have never felt safe in this house when it is windy.

Even having some trees to break the wind would be nice. But trees are merely saplings here in subdivisionland.

It’s also garbage day. So putting out the garbage today means running the risk of having your garbage, as well as your garbage cans, blown all over the neighbourhood. We’ve already lost one can to the wind; I don’t know if I’m willing to surrender another one. Of course, that can, with our address written in BIG BLACK LETTERS all over it, only got blown to the bottom of the street, but none of the arses that live down there had the sense of responsibility to drive 100 yards up the street and bring it back. Six months later, we were driving by, and there was our garbage can, sitting by the community mailbox, being used by lazy dog owners to get rid of their dog poop. Nice.

A bit of siding on one side of our house is loose. These new homes — bad workmanship abounds. Anyway, whenever the wind blows just so, the siding goes thump-thump-thump against the house. Mind you, the wind is what knocked the siding loose in the first place, months ago, and each time BDH goes out to fix it, more wind comes along a few weeks later and just knocks it loose again. So fixing it is not only perilous to one’s health, given that the siding is 3 stories up and the roof inclines ridiculously sharply, but also it’s a colossal waste of time.

Maybe the wind will just knock it back into place again, and we won’t have to worry.

And with the wind comes a “flash freeze” warning. It poured rain last night, and then the wind came and the temperature dropped from 8 degrees C to -10 degrees C over about 12 hours. So that means that water on the roads can freeze, and make driving hazardous. I think the wind dried the water before it had a chance to freeze, which is good. But then, instead, we have blowing snow. So either way, having BDH out on the roads to and from soccer or work or whatever is cause for a bit of concern.

So the wind continues to blow.

We did have one little intrepid squirrel come to the feeder today. He didn’t mind the wind. He sat up on top of a fencepost and munched away on his peanuts like it was as nice as you please out there. But then, he’s pretty small. Little wind resistance.

But not me. I provide a big buttload (literally) of wind resistance. So I am staying indoors.

Although if the wind keeps up, roaring against this little house of sticks, who knows how long that will be.

Thank goodness there are no wolves here at the south end of town.

It’s back to work for BDH today, and so that means me, too.

It’s been a long time indeed since we’ve had to work. We had 2 weeks vacation, but then we were sidelined by sickness last week. And before that, work was hit and miss as it was New Year’s and before that Christmas holidays. So it’s been well over a MONTH since we’ve had a regular routine around here.

I’ve been missing it recently. I like having things to do and being busy. Sure, I like days off as well as the next person, and sitting around like a pyjama-clad lump of goo can be quite lovely sometimes. But not ALL the time. I need to do things. I get bored after awhile.

And after this past week of being off and sick… I have been VERY BORED.

But I wasn’t prepared for the shock and horror of MY ALARM GOING OFF. While I was, you know, SLEEPING.

I had forgotten there were times of day BEFORE 8 am. I pried my eyes open and tried to function. It wasn’t going well.

I figured, therefore, that I was justified in hitting the snooze button at least once. Because I was trying to EASE INTO it, you see. I mean, no one can do that sort of thing COLD TURKEY.

But I did eventually stagger out of bed and downstairs, and packed up a (not the best I’ve ever made but still passable) breakfast and lunch for BDH. And I made myself some breakfast and some coffee, and I got the cats fed. I saw BDH off to work.

And as I started my first load of laundry for the day, I hummed some bad tune or other to myself and I thought quite cockily, “Hey, this getting back to a routine business is No. Problemo. I’m doing well.”

And that’s when the cup of liquid laundry soap I had just measured out took a half-gainer out of my hand and, in slow motion, like a car crash, somersaulted ever-so-gracefully earthward, spraying scented blue horror over objects as it spiralled past. And then, as the coup-de-grace, it pinballed down — ping! plong! ping! plong! — between the washer and the dryer until it came to rest, inevitably, upside down on the floor.

Le sigh.

That first day back to work, it’s no picnic, I can tell you.

Oh, how I loathe winter.

I’ve never been a fan. When I was a child, I hated having to go outside and play in the snow. I hated tobogganing. I hated building snowmen and building snow forts and throwing snowballs (which the rotten, hateful children across the street who hated and tormented my sisters and I and would pelt us with at regular intervals).

And wind chill. God, how I hate the words “wind chill”. When you start talking about wind chill, it’s like an endurance test. Bragging about how frigging cold it can truly get before your ears and fingers and nose begin to lose feeling. And don’t even get me started about that other loathesome part of winter, freezing rain.

I think I began to love reading because it was good reason to stay indoors.

So winter is not my favourite time of year. Not by a long shot. As February approaches, I find I get a little edgy and restless, trapped inside by the cold and wind and snow. I begin to feel like a mushroom, sitting inside in the dark, watching the internet scroll by or viewing endless DVDs.

I love living in Canada, except for the winter. I often dreamed of living elsewhere and escaping this horrible cold weather. There would be too much to give up and of course at this stage of my life, married and waiting to start a family, it will never happen. But still, from the time I was in my early teens, I was looking for ways to escape. Just to get away from the 6-ish months of cold.

I’d be perfectly content if it was only cold for a month or so, and maybe we got snow around Christmas time. In fact, that was what the weather was like where I lived in Japan, and it was marvellous. The coldest it got, the temperature hovered around zero and if there was snow, it was fluffy and wet and melted soon after hitting the ground. Of course, there was also rainy season and hurricane season to contend with there, so you know, nothing’s perfect.

But here I sit, trapped inside as the wind blows cold outside for the third or fourth straight day. The driveway and the sidewalk need shovelling and soon I am going to have to suck it up and put on some warm clothes and go out.

I can tolerate winter when the air is still, when there’s no wind, and the temperature is still close to zero. Then I don’t mind shovelling or going on errands, and I don’t find myself hibernating for days at a time. But those days are past. We’re in deepest, darkest January chill now. And February with all it’s cold, damp, stormy glory is right around the corner.

If ever we’re rich enough, I am TOTALLY retiring to the Caribbean.

We’re sick. We’ve both come down with colds. And we’re crabby.

It never fails. Whenever we take vacation, we get sick. It’s like we finally relax and then all the viruses/bacteria/whatever in the universe get all excited at the prospect of a party. It’s just a matter of which one gets to us first.

This year, it’s a cold. Usually we get something on the plane, on the way there (which means we’re sick while we’re away, which always sucks) or on the way home. But this came on a little late for something from the plane, so I am guessing it’s just something we picked up while we were out and about grocery shopping or whatever this week.

As usual, BDH is sicker than I am. He always gets it worse than me. I have a head full of cotton and a headache, and maybe the beginnings of a rattle in my chest. But poor old BDH is honking and blowing and sneezing and coughing. And I feel bad for him. But he’s also one of those people who hates to have anyone fussing over him when he’s sick so he just walks around and grumbles about being sick and is… well… sick.

We’ve pulled out the daybed into a big king-sized bed, and we’ve pulled up the blankets, and we and assorted cats have found ourselves a nice snuggly comfy spot where we can feel sorry for ourselves and drink soup and watch DVDs until we feel better. Which should be sometime tomorrow or Wednesday, if it’s a typical cold.

Maybe I’ll knit some more. Who knows. Because the world can always use more hats.

Apparently I am one of those people who does things when they are asleep and has no memory of doing them afterwards. Which is funny, because my sleep for this past little while is so fragmented and fitful — you’d think that with all the million times I wake up during the night, I’d remember SOMETHING.

But no.

BDH used to tell me about whole conversations we would have in the middle of the night, when he’d come home from a support call or something. I tried to play along that I knew what the hell he was talking about, but after awhile I had to admit that I had no clue. No memory whatsoever.

When I was a kid, I wore braces. And with braces comes headgear. And with headgear comes me, taking it off in my sleep and dropping it off the side of the bed onto the floor. Completely unawares, mind you. I’d wake up to find my headgear somewhere on the floor within throwing radius of my bed.

And now, I have my mask, my CPaP for sleeping.

My mask does not escape the wonder that is the sleeping Me. Oh no. Generally speaking I am pretty good about keeping it on, for the most part. Occasionally I will find it lying beside me on my pillow, but those times I know why — usually it was that I pulled it off my face to readjust it or scratch my nose or something, and just fell back asleep before I managed to put it back on. No big deal. And sometimes I have a mask lying on the bed beside me, but generally those times I got frustrated with it or whatever. I often have a vague recollection of those ones, too, because generally speaking I make the conscious “Oh SCREW it” decision and I take it off and lay it carefully on the bed beside me out of danger of rolling over on it or getting tangled in the hose.

And then there are the headgear moments, when I wake up and find the mask flung to the floor over beside the bed in an odd pile. Those ones I don’t remember so much.

And then there’s last night.

Apparently, at some point after 2 am (when I woke up, took off my iPod and placed it carefully on the night table, checked the time, and rolled over and went back to sleep) and before 8:45 am this morning (when I woke up with a sneeze or twelve and realized I’d slept without my mask and was paying for it with my allergies) I took off my mask. But not just took it off — oh no.

Apparently I took it off, got the hose all neatly organized, and placed it carefully over on the night table. On the far side. On the far side of the machine, next to the wall. Which takes some doing, because I originally set all this gear up, I purposefully put the machine far out of reach to avoid it being knocked off the night table by flailing hands and blankets and whatnot. It would have taken me getting up and reaching way over to get it placed as neatly as it was.

But I was asleep. Wasn’t I?

I got up and came up to see BDH at his computer. And I actually had to ask him if he had done it for me.

Nope.

So as I suffer the ill-effects of a mask-free night and sneeze my brains out and rub my itchy eyes until they are black like I’ve been in a bar fight, I have to ask myself: Just what the hell else have I been doing in my sleep?

Wandering around the house? Tap dancing? Robbing banks?

And why is it that I can’t wake up to discover a nicely folded stack of clean laundry?

Starting tomorrow at about 5:05 pm, BDH is taking two weeks of vacation. TWO WEEKS.

In all his working life, he’s never had two weeks together. Heck, there have been some years where he hasn’t even had one week together — like the year he used all his vacation time up on helping my ungrateful family with their many crises. Or the year he used up all his vacation going to and from infertility treatment appointments.

So two weeks together is unprecedented.

And he SO needs it. He works very hard, and starting this past year, he plays hard too. With working all day and soccer games late into the night, he’s been going full steam for quite a while now. He could use the rest.

Come to think of it, I can use the rest too. I know I am at home all day, and most people believe that — because we don’t have kids yet — I have it pretty easy. And I’ll admit, my quality of life is infinitely better than when I was going to an arse office and doing arse work all day. But even though I am home, life has still been busy. For 2007, I did research for and kept 3 blogs going, plus another I did for about half the year. And I am a contributing writer for another site. My volleyball writing alone keeps me busy, often for well over 30 hours a week, all unpaid. Add to that the hour or so per day I spend on this blog, plus the regular housework/cooking/cat management/shopping-and-errands stuff I do around the house, and it gets to be a full week.

And that’s not even counting the adoption stuff, which — while the work involved comes in intense fits and starts — just adds stress and strain to daily life.

So I am tired, too. And really looking forward to this two weeks off.

We have no money, so we’re not going anywhere extravagant or tropical. But we’re still getting a little vacation away. We are heading home to visit family for a week, where we always unwind and enjoy the company of people we truly enjoy spending time with. Plus BDH has been feeling rather homesick, so it will be great to be able to spend time with his family. And then we come home for another week off.

That will be nice too. We both get a break from our daily routines. We get to sleep later, we get to indulge in more than a little mindless fun time, and we get to nap whenever we feel the inclination. Complete and utter laziness will be indulged, for the most part. I’ll still be blogging, even though I am off. And I’ll probably catch some matches and report on them too. But that’s ok. It’ll still be nice to be mostly “off”.

It isn’t always fun and games, though. We always get sick on holidays — particularly BDH. It’s as if his body finally just lets go and lets down its guard, and in that time every cold and flu in the universe sees it as party time. And so then it follows that I get sick too. So I’ve been sharing out the orange juice this week, just in case.

But we don’t care. Sick or well, home or away, we’re soon on VAY-CAY-SHUN! Woot!