A View of Winter's Poetry

Take weathered crab apples, stark branches and clots of snowflakes of the sort that cling to ones eyelashes and I can help seeing some kind of poetry - at least of theh visual sort.

Here I am back in the land of Walmarts, paved highway's, vegetables so cheap and fresh its obscene and bandwidth so fat that even picture-heavy websites load up faster than I can say achoo! - and I've hardly touched the internet, I'm dreadfully sick of driving, I've been eating far too few vegetables and I'd rather friendly faces in the Northern than the cold impersonal stranger flooding the local Walmart - but it is nice to see my family and friends.

Its been busy and non-stop on the go - I'm hoping things sort of slow down after Christmas. Hoping perhaps against hope - maybe ... well, hope doesn't need to be founded in any kind of reality.....

I've dutifully met two of three new additions to the world. My best friends daughter is too young to make much of - she was cute though. My brother's son however must have realized that I'm afraid of babbies and charmed me thoroughly by grinning goofily at me every chance he got.... he's not so scary - perhaps its a side effect of growing up surrounded by dinosaurs and dragons which he keeps affable by chewing on their noses when they get out of line.

As for the weather, my consulation prize for learning that it is unwise to ever book a return ticket unnecessarily is that I didn't have to deal with any of the weather delays on Thursday - so it was a smooth sail home. For anyone who doesn't know, you can't cancel the first part of a return ticket - you have to cancel both and rebook the second or forfeit the first half.... grrr... Since I've been home... I feel that I've been feeling cold inordinately often given that I've been just fine up north at much colder temperatures for months... I've been battling cold, numb hands and even the indoor chills since I've been back. Now.. its been chilly for this part of the world since I've arrived, with at least 3 snowstorms tromping accross the GTA in the space of a few days. We even have real snow, although the rain expected tomorrow will not be nice for it... so we may not get a white Christmas even after valiently digging out of so much snow. As I sit here, I'm wearing my outdoor coat and feeling a touch cooler than is good... but I think my yawns are a clear sign as to what I should do about it.

So more excitement - other than snow - there was my first day visiting Toronto before our seats on the plane were cold. I visited the Ontario Crafter's Guild and chatted with many of the folk there - although most interesting was the lady from Nunavut who is in charge of the Inuit artwork. She told me a good deal about Baker Lake (Qamanituaq) that I hadn't learned yet and it was neat to see the carvings from all the different communities in one place and see the differences in the styles. The next day was a franctic day of Christmas and clothes shopping - we didn't stray too far owing to terrible road conditions. Then it was a trek to Kingston to visit with my best friend and her friends.... where I stumbled into my first Grocery Store and witnessed an insanity of fruits and vegetables... I nearly didn't make it out of the store without a few bags of them... well, and then I followed incorrectly some poor directions and got a pretty descent tour of Kingston - more of a tour than I wanted given that I was late. I managed to get turned around on the way out.. I'm really not a big fan of random 1-way streets. I managed to make it back before the 2nd storm made too much of a mess out of the highway. The rest of the days haven't been all that interesting. I've managed a bit of reading and visiting and we did our annual gingerbread decorating... I'll have to post a picture of that soon.

I recall having something that I still wanted to say when I started the paragraph above, but its really time to get some more sleep. Oh yes... of course.. I never have to go downtown again because they've built a MEC (Mountain Equipment Coop) in Burlington :D.... I obtained a set of relatively inexpensive gloves there... so so exciting and I'd wished for my camera as we got there via Britania and Walker's Line and it was a pretty day dressed in fresh snow with enough of it blowing in the air ot diffuse the sunlight and give everything a pleasent and dreamy glow.... next time....

and now I think I'm caught up in words and will post more pictures soon, now that I'm set up and organized.