November 24, 2011
We live in a country where winter consumes six months of the year.
Snow, ice, cold temperatures are the norm here, not the anomaly.
Nonetheless, yesterday's snowfall, the first significant-stick-to-the-ground snowfall, rendered drivers completely stunned.
Bewildered.
Confounded.
Confused.
Numb.
Dumbfounded.
Because that is the only explanation I can come up with for their complete inability to operate a motor vehicle with a modicum, grain, fraction of common sense during a snowfall.
That, or the snowflakes were really crystallized forms of LSD.
Of course, we have an appointment to get our snowtires on TODAY.
During the first snowfall, Em and I had to schlepp to Oromocto for a doctor's appointment.
While Oromocto is only a 15 minute drive from Fredericton, for some reason, they had a lot more snow than we did.
Meaning having Em drive wasn't as good an idea as I had originally thought.
She was fine until we got off the highway and onto the snow covered ramp and I was telling her as gently as I could muster with panic coursing through my veins that she really needed to slow down.
I love Em.
She has the potential to be a good driver.
Snowing or not, though, she has a tendency to wait significantly longer than I would to apply the brakes.
In any situation.
Meaning when we drive, I am often applying imaginary brakes long before she thinks of using the one right under her foot.
My panic wasn't well contained and she applied the brakes with too much force causing the car to fishtail whilst another car was coming toward us.
Needless to say after that experience, she applied the brakes when I told her and for the first time since she's started driving slowed down when I asked her to and not when she wanted to.
Stephen does the exact same thing.
Makes me equally nervous and overwrought.
And it's taking a damn sight longer to get him to listen.
I have become my mother-the-most-nervous-winter-driver-to-ever-get-behind-the-wheel-of-a-car.
There has to be a medication for that.
Luckily, the weather is turning back to its unusual warmth for this time of year and tomorrow we will treated to a balmy 9 degrees Celsius, which should be warm enough to melt the infernal white grains of cold and misery from the ground.
I used to love winter.
But as each winter passes my tolerance for stupid drivers, poor city snow removal, bitter cold, my fear of falling, inability of the school board to recognize a storm and cancel school for the day, shoveling the driveway or fighting with the kids to shovel the driveway, decreases significantly.
And don't even get me started on Christmas.
That'll come later.
Em presented her sociology seminar yesterday.
She applied symbolic interactionist theory to explain the changing meaning of Holocaust symbols.
The swastika, Star of David, and tattoos.
Apparently, her seminar generated significant discussion among her usually mute class mates and even the teacher had no questions to ask to further the discussion.
I may have my sociologist.
Finger crossed.
Title: Bad Habit by Offspring
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