the aftermath

We are firmly in the other-worldly time between Christmas and New Years. The bustle of Christmas is over and now it’s time to think of what I’ll serve New Years Eve… every year it’s the same conundrum: sit down meal or nibbles all night. 

Yesterday our family got together - all 16 of us gathered in Mom and Dad’s house - a wonderful sort of chaos! We had a traditional Norwegian Christmas Eve supper, just a few days late so that everyone could be there. The weather Gods gave us a special blessing - clear roads for travelling. (fyi - the cardamom buns were a big hit)

Today in the spirit of Christmas time, we cleaned the oven! Carm did the bulk of the heavy work while I flung gross paper towels into the trashcan (no reusable ones today). It was a quiet day, I have no excuses but I was lazy as all heck today - no snowshoeing - the thought of having to remake my trails was more than I could bear. I was even too lazy to watch a movie.

I’ll backtrack to Christmas morning: Carm got bundled up for the gargantuan task of clearing the laneway… well… the snow drifts were high along the laneway, some areas were too high for the snowblower, but worst of all was the horror story between the gate and the road! The snow on the other side of the gate was well over 3 feet high and it filled the 15+ feet between gate and road. Impossible for the snowblower. Impossible for a 68 year old man and an out of shape 60 year old woman to shovel out. The snow was hard packed from over 40 hours of high winds. Bricks of snow perfect for an igloo were carved out in an attempt to free our home.

Carm got the gate cleared so that it would (barely) open in and as luck would have it a guy driving by in a big tractor with snow blade and blower took pity on us! It was a hard 45 minutes for him to free us but gosh, we were happy to hand over a stack of bills! Even so, Carm was out for at least an hour and a half. I did a half-hearted shovel of the back deck - just a path from the door to the gate.

Awesome!

“family”

“John ‘Snow’”