winter weary

I’ve heard it said by people who can just shut up, “You chose to live here! You can’t complain about the weather! You can’t do anything about it anyway!” They can just have a high five. In the face. With a chair. Because here’s the thing: There has been snow on the ground in Saskatoon since October. I have not seen the ground since then. I miss the grass. I miss my garden. I just want all the snow to GO AWAY ALREADY.

This is what my front yard looks like:

That pile on the left is as tall as (or taller than) Noah.

And at this rate, we’ll have a level-with-the-ground trampoline.

It’s depressing when people are posting photos of themselves and their families doing spring activities (my brother was PADDLE BOARDING)(which, I guess, helps with their case of getting us to the Okanagan one day) and I’m wading through freshly-fallen knee-deep snow and there is waist-deep snow in my yard and I don’t think the snow on my garden will melt till June. It’s a good thing we get to go to BC in a few weeks, because I need some grass therapy.

Um, not that kind. Although, yes, BC has great grass. But I mean the kind where I gaze upon ground that is covered in green, not white.

I hate the feeling of coasting through each day, longing for a time that is not now. Longing to live in a place that is not covered in snow eight months of the year. I’m getting so desperate that I’m actually allowing myself to dream of a time when we will live by the ocean again. I do love the prairies, quite a lot, but I love the ocean more. I don’t usually let myself dream about such things that will likely never happen, or not happen for a very long time. It’s much easier and less disappointing to just live for today and not think ahead at all. But, as I keep getting told, it’s also not healthy. So, I’m trying.

The girls and I battled our winter blues on Sunday afternoon by making some chocolate chip cookies. Only we didn’t have many chocolate chips and we used butterscotch instead. Butterscotch is not chocolate, and should not be substituted as such, but at least the girls liked the cookies. And we made something all together with nobody yelling and nobody crying, so that’s a win.

And the sky today? It is blue. It is perfect. And the boys are, at this moment, happily doing what they love to do best: running the length of the house while pushing their strollers and yelling and giggling and falling over and doing it all over again. Not so shabby for a Monday.