Remember that cold I mentioned in last week’s column? As I type this, I still have it, despite the best efforts of my Florence Nightingale, our daughter.
The night after I typed up the last column, I went home and crashed on the couch as our kid, Brenna, got ready for dance practice. I knew I had a fever. My feet caught a chill and I couldn’t get them warm. So, I donned an extra pair of thermal socks.
When the time came to take her to dance, I put on my biggest pair of winter boots.
As soon as we got home, I pulled out the heating pad and slipped under two blankets.
Still, I could not get warm. But the family told me my head certainly was hot.
I think I got a headache from my teeth chattering for so long.
Finally, the cold meds kicked in later in the evening and I had to unwrap, to the point I was soon down to just a T-shirt.
Go figure.
I tried to get up for work the next day, but informed Mary that I still felt like I’d been run over, so I went back to bed. By this time, my cold was squarely in my chest, and the pain was lodged in my skull. Every time I coughed, and I did a lot, my head felt like it would explode.
No fun.
But I had a support team. My daughter, who wasn’t feeling 100 per cent herself, stayed home that day. She badly needed some extra sleep, and got it, but as soon as she got up, she was looking after me.
That included cooking me some chicken noodle soup for lunch.
I only missed that one day of work, but the coughing continues. The fever, however, didn’t hang around long, thankfully.
My support stayed close. On the weekend, with all that snow, our teenager came home from work and immediately offered to help me shovel the driveway. It was done in a matter of minutes, with her help.
I had already shovelled in the morning, and went back out in the evening to do it again, as well as the next morning. But her support, without being asked, was greatly appreciated.
Good kid.
As the snow fell, I believe I could feel her urging Mother Nature to keep dropping it overnight, so Monday would be a snow day. She rose early Monday morning, looked at me expectantly with half-open eyes, and waited until I confirmed the buses weren’t running.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said with a smile.
Baker’s dozen
Did I mention the kid bakes too? Saturday afternoon, she and my wife went over to my sister-in-law’s and baked up a storm, bringing Christmas cookies home that evening. Lots of variety and lots of taste.
Salted caramel cheesecake bites, ricotta cookies, peanut blossoms and chocolate crinkles.
Yum. I was hard pressed to say which one was my favourite, as they were all great, and unique.
The issue is trying to eat as few of these as possible so they are available over the Christmas holidays.
Umm, I think more baking may be in order.
Snow job
As I mentioned, we shovelled our driveway four times during the Sunday/Monday storm. Some folks may think that’s overkill, but I shovelled a couple of inches of snow each time, making it very manageable.
And since it warmed up overnight, the final shovel effort Monday morning was a heavy one, as the snow was saturated with water. It would have been a nightmare trying to move all the snow at one time.
Sure, you are out there more often, but the tasks remain manageable if you shovel repeatedly during a heavy snow.
As for our road, it’s interesting to see the municipal crews in action, as we live on a street with no municipal transit, but with school bus access. The salt truck was slow to be spotted after last Thursday’s snowfall and resulting slick conditions, but we had a plow make the circuit in the middle of Sunday’s storm.
It hadn’t made a return trip by Monday morning, but the road was certainly easy to navigate. And the main streets were pretty decent through most of the storm. Nice work, C-K Public Works!
