This afternoon I had a flashback to a cold memory from years ago. It's the middle of January here and much of the country is having record lows. What is our temperature today? Over sixty degrees. Several days ago it was in the teens, but it's nice outside now. It's been rainy all day and we had a wild storm pass through with tornadoes (rare for us) mid-afternoon. But other than that, it was a very nice day.
My two children and I were at our next door neighbor's house for a while and when we came home, my two got very excited about the water running down the curb towards the drain. They splashed their way all the way down to the cul-de-sac and I had to corral them in, only to find out they wanted to go back for more splashing. It was nice enough weather so I told them to take their pants and socks off, put on their crocks (fully plastic shoes) and have at it. It was tough to get them in, even after it started to rain and we were all getting a bit wet overall.
While they were splashing around following, "the river" my son decided the rivulet was, I had a flashback to a January many years ago when I was doing some business in the city of Calgary in Alberta, Canada.
It was cold. It was twenty-seven degrees below freezing. I discovered several interesting things during that week there. First, my curly, frizzy hair became straight and smooth with the complete lack of humidity in the air. Second, I had to go buy something called, "nasal gel" to put in my nose to keep it from cracking internally as a result of this same dryness. And third, I found out they put sand on the streets instead of salt, because salt only helps to a certain temperature because after it gets below that temperature, it's not going to help with any melting.
Also, I found out about something called the "Plus Fifteen." I was teaching two buildings over in the downtown area from the hotel in which I was staying. There was a sidewalk that took me straight to the entrance of that building and I planned on Monday morning to walk there. When I spoke with my on-site contact, he told me about this plus fifteen thing and how I could get to their building via these walkways on the second floors that connected all the downtown buildings together. They were called "Plus Fifteen" because they were fifteen feet off the ground.
I went to the lobby and got some directions. To get two blocks over, I was going to have to walk seven blocks going out of my way via this enclosed walkway network. "Pft," I thought. "I can make it two blocks, easy." Monday morning I walked out the front door and started walking to the site. That's when I realized I didn't know what I was talking about. Good grief, it was cold. I fairly stumbled into the building one block over and stood there for ten minutes warming up before walking the second block to the site.
For the rest of the trip I praised the wonder of the Plus Fifteen and was thankful for remaining warm. As a life-long tenant of the south, it was quite an experience.
The Big Boy Update: Pacifier separation. He is down to two, sometimes one pacifiers. One, he likes, the other he doesn't want at all. When the one he likes has gone missing (fallen under the bed) he doesn't seem to care much and goes to sleep with out it at night. I think he's about done with pacifiers and we might suddenly lose his favorite one in short order.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Pacifier dependence. She is only allowed a pacifier when sleeping, but with the new freedom to get in and out of their room at will, she keeps getting her pacifiers and toting them around the house. She had one "thrown in the trash" yesterday when she wouldn't put it back in the middle of the day. She was quite upset. We're going to have to put hers up and out of sight until she gets into bed at night if she keeps this up. Before, when they only went into their bedrooms to go to sleep at night or for naps, she didn't seem to care as much.
No comments:
Post a Comment