The Never Ending Winter

It is April 21st, right?

Spring has been here officially for a month, right?

RIGHT????

I think time has literally frozen and I live in the Land of the Never Ending Winter.

I am not amused.

And neither is Pips, apparently.

Since I last posted...

...the amount of snow has increased, by at least 20 cm and the threat of flooding this spring has increased from minor - moderate... to moderate - major. I'm glad I have a functioning sump pump in my basement. Now I just have to find the where with all to try and move a lot of the snow away from my house so it doesn't end up in my basement when it melts. Several young strong men would be a good thing...

Had to deal with a ruptured AV fistula at work last week, which was a complete blood bath. (Same amount of blood flow as if you sliced someone's carotid artery in their neck.) Isn't it amazing how little blood it actually takes to make a scene look horrifying? Needless to say, despite several of us nurses being covered in the stuff, the patient survived with no real ill effects, other than she no longer has a fistula and had to have a temporary dialysis catheter inserted into her jugular vein. Sure made the shift pass quickly, though, and I assisted the vascular surgeon during the ligation of said ruptured vessel. Good thing, also, that my watch survived getting scrubbed with antibacterial/viricidal soap when I washed off the blood that was up past my elbows. How I managed to only get one spot on my uniform is beyond me.

I sat through a grueling 3 hour appeal for my compensation case relating to my shoulder injury of (yes, it's been that long) 2 years ago. They sent me a letter the other day stating they will have an independent sports medicine specialist review the case and give an opinion and they then have 60 days to state their decision. So I should have news by sometime in June. If they do decide in my favour, I should end up with a few dollars to help dig me out of the debt-filled hole I had to dig to survive without a proper income for over a year. I have no feel for how it went, other than I would like to punch out the hospital's representative who stated in the politest terms that I was a liar, as was my union labour relations officer, my two doctors and my physiotherapist. If she was an American lawyer, I could see it... she was just that slimy.

I briefly had a dog. A nice doberman named Kaluha that was my best friend's dog. Due to her mum being very ill with cancer and the process of moving to another province to be with her mum, I agreed to take in the dog, as I had known her since she was 8 weeks old (and she is now almost 8 years old). However, I didn't know she would try and kill Lila. Luckily, she didn't, the cat is safe, but the dog now has another new home with another friend, who lives in the country and had also know the dog for years. Kaluha is very well trained, and was no trouble at all, other than the cat issue. Pips, being her outgoing self, did her best to befriend the dog, and kind of succeeded. Kaluha would be pretty good with her, but as she was settling in, started getting a bit too nippy, but would stop the instant I said anything. But the other morning, she flew down the basement stairs after Lila, growling and snarling. The cat made it up to the top of the cat tree and so was safe, but that was it. I can't have a dog in the house who isn't 100% trustworthy with the cats. They have seniority, after all.

And now... I have a cold. Air passing over my tonsils hurts me. Luckily, my nose isn't very congested at all (crossing my fingers it doesn't get that way) so I don't have to resort to being a mouth breather. I have a cough... one of those horrible, chesty coughs where you sound like a damn seal barking, and my voice makes me sounds like a pubescent boy or an old geezer, often in the same sentence. So far, what I'm coughing up is white, but if it changes to yellow or green, off to the doctor I go.

So there you have it... my life in a nutshell for the past little while.

On the plus side of nothing

It would seem (fingers crossed behind my back) that Spring may be in the air.

I say this because, despite the mounds of thigh deep snow everywhere, the thermometer has actually inched up to just a tad above zero. Visual proof below, taken through my livingroom window, mere moments ago.

Now I realize that I live in an area with a climate virtually identical to Siberia's, but sometimes the seasonal change comes early and isn't plagued with spring blizzards and wicked cold snaps. No way of telling if those will occur, but for now, I can revel in the fact that the sun is shining cheerily out there and the roads will be slushy. Best top up the windshield washer fluid before I head to work this afternoon!

The flood forecast is supposed to be issued sometime this week. Looking at the amount of snow in my tiny little yard, I am wondering if any of it will end up trying to seep (read: pour) into my tiny little basement. Good thing I have a sump pump down there.

I also wonder about the humongous cap of snow on my rooftop. (No, I don't have a photo of that.) It looks nice, and is very insulating, but what happens when it starts to melt? Will it avalanche off in huge clumps, smothering me as I walk along to my back door? I'll have to keep my wits about me and leap under the overhang if that happens. (And if I don't, they'll find me after the spring thaw.)

So, I am back, I guess. Not sure if I will keep this up regularly but I will try and post once in a while. I've not fallen down a facebook hole, never to be seen or heard from again.

Gone (ice) fishin'

Sorry to cause any worry out there, but for whatever reason, I just haven't had anything to post. Please know that everything is fine and I am doing well (as are the kitties). I also haven't really be going around reading other blogs either. My bad.

So if I see you on facebook, you'll know the scoop. If you're not on there, that's where I tend to surface when I go online.

Hope everyone is having a good year so far! Only 361 more days until the next one starts...


Okay, never mind. Be good! Take care! Have fun!

If you can't be good, at least be careful.

Fluff and stuff

We had the first real storm of the winter roll through this past weekend. While not terribly cold (the temperature at lowest was then around -7C), it was definitely snowy.

According to the weather newsperson on Monday morning, the amount of snow we got on Saturday was what would normally fall during the entire month of November.

We got walloped! Unfortunately, that meant there were quite a few car accidents and one of my friends lost his ex-inlaws in a fatal crash. For some reason, many people seem to forget that to drive in winter means slowing down majorly and leaving lots of time and distance between you and anyone else on the road.

Luckily, I had just had my snow tires put on my car a few days before the storm, so  I beat a lot of people out there. I can imagine the wait to get that done this week. I do prefer to be proactive when it comes to getting and keeping my car in decent shape, especially now that I have a commute on the highway to get to work.

I am in the second week of my "staycation" and continue to wander around the house, unpacking and organizing. A lot of the non-essential stuff was put on hold while I was concentrating on getting the bathroom completed. And now that the temperatures outside are continuing to drop (it's -14C this morning, but bright and sunny), it's time to do a little weatherproofing on some older windows and the front door.

Eventually (we're talking years here...), all the windows will be replaced with top quality ones that will keep out the drafts and not get all covered in moisture. I don't use the front door right now, and it's an older wooden one (nothing to look at but leaky as a sieve), so it will be new weatherstripping for it as well as one of those sweeps that goes on the bottom. I held my hand to the bottom and could feel the draft yesterday! I'm not fond of paying to heat the outdoors. The back door is a newer steel door that is properly sealed so that's not a worry.

And a post wouldn't be complete without some mention of at least one of the cats, so here is Pips, outside in the snow, and suitably unimpressed. She actually went back into the house when I opened the door... which is a first! Lila has no desire to venture outside... she's a big chicken.

Pips definitely likes to be warm, as can be seen by her choice of resting spots.