Every morning I get up and make coffee. Holly and I sit in the living room, browsing the internet, and every now and again my gaze shifts from my monitor to the window next to my desk. Somehow, every day I manage to time my aimless staring outside to the same dog taking a dump on our driveway. It’s like a morning ritual. Make coffee, check email, watch a dog pooping. The dog doesn’t seem particularly apologetic about it, often looking up at me at the window while its back leg twitches. I often nod my approval to its owner after he cleans up after the mutt. Then I put on some clothes.
Today, my view is dominated by the snow that’s falling at quite a rapid rate. Snow is something I’ve only recently started getting used to. Last winter was pretty mild, and the snow levels stayed quite remarkably low. The four years prior to that were spent in Scotland - where there is usually no snow to speak of. Of course, as soon as I left, Scotland (and the UK in general) have experienced two of their harshest winters ever.
Anyway. Every time there is a heavy snowfall, I have very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it’s beautiful. We live on a tree-lined street, and there are lots of pretty houses getting covered in snow. On the other hand, every time it snows I need to shovel the sidewalk again.
Imagine if you had to sit and watch as your carpet got covered in cat hair. Imagine that somehow time was sped up so you could watch it accumulate in the space of an hour and a half. Now imagine that the government made it mandatory that you had to hoover your carpet within an hour of the cat hair messing up your carpet or they would fine you. This is what I feel like when it snows.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t mind shoveling that much, it’s just disheartening to know that as soon as you clear it, it’ll just build up again. I also worry that I’m somehow doing it wrong. I haven’t very much experience with this sort of thing, so I’m kind of improvising as soon as I go out there. I have three main tools at my disposal; a large shovel, a broom and a metal scraper thing on the end of a stick. I’m pretty sure that I’m using them in the correct fashion, but the task is so simple that I don’t want to ask anyone to be sure. All the people walking by always smile at me as they walk past, but it’s difficult to tell if they’re being friendly or find my efforts to clear the ice to be hilarious.
If the Canadian government suddenly decide to follow their American counterparts and introduce a citizenship test for new immigrants, I’m willing to be that they won’t be asking them about previous Prime Ministers, they’ll be handing them snow shovels and getting them to order coffee at Tim Hortons. I’d say that’s what being Canadian is all about.
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