Weather With You

Moving to Ottawa was a BIG deal. Months and months of preparation, planning, list-making and list-items-crossing-off-of; packing and storing and travelling and then - there I was. All things considered, the move went farely well. And I was really only unprepared for two things:

Summer and winter.

I arrived in O-Town halfway through a typical August. What is a typical August? you might ask. Well, let's just say it's...how to put it...ummm...FREAKIN' HOT. Face-melting, hair-frizzing, skin-toasting, sweat-puddling HOT. And a humid hot, one where the air has substance, like you could just reach out and grab a handful and stick it in your pocket for, say, December. It was actually a little freaky at first - like that scene in The Abyss where the guy is demonstrating this breathable gel by trapping a rat in a tub of it, and the rat is all freakin' out and his owner is all "you're killing him, man!" and the guy is all chill, like "don't worry, don't worry" and meanwhile the rat is just going apeshit, flailing and choking and eyes-bulging and just generally making a scene in the airport, until finally she gets used to it and manages to get all her suitcases onto the bus for downtown.

Or something like that. See, there's this crazy little thing called a "humidex", wherein the temperature is, say, 30 degrees, but not really, see, it's really 45 because of the "humidex" even though the weatherman says its 30, but it's not, it's actually much, much hotter. I'd never heard of this before, despite the fact that I had many a person tell me that because I was from an island, surrounded by water (as opposed to those islands which are surrounded by land?), it must have been very very humid there. Oh right, it must have been. I just never noticed for 18 and a half years.

But it wasn't all bad - if you showered and changed three times a day and spent as much time as possible in air-conditioned buildings and only ventured outside at night when you could run around in just shorts and a tank top with a maragarita at 2 in the morning, which was actually pretty fun, come to think of it.

And the best part? Was that the humidity gradually lessened, the temperature eventually dropped to 30 (for real), then down to that perfect weather where you can wear jeans and t-shirt all day, and then throw on that gorgeous new sweater that you blew a day's pay on at Jacob and still sit on the patio of the local pub and admire your first real Fall.

Growing up on the coast, I'd never really seen fall before. I mean, sure, I'd technically lived through almost two decades worth, but fall in Victoria is a lot like summer, only with school. Okay, it's also wetter and greener. But my god...autumn in O-town? Like Mother Nature's Technicolour Dreamcoat. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to spend every day with Fall; we were soulmates and we were going to be together forever.

But if Fall is the charming romantic who sweeps you off your feet and makes sweet sweet colourful love to you, then Winter is the 5-month herpes outbreak that Fall so conveniently forgot to mention.

The warning signs were there, of course, but I was just an innocent Victorian, too blinded by the Autumn landscape to notice. People began packing away their summer clothes, but I didn't catch on. "Summer wardrobe"? "Winter wardrobe"? Where I was from, generally speaking, "winter wardrobe"="summer wardrobe + rain jacket".

It didn't start to sink in until I went winter jacket shopping with some friends, and picked out what I thought was a pretty heavy-duty coat, only to be told, "Yeah, that should do you - for now".

Shit.

So I began layering...thick tights and wool sweaters in November, a fleece under the winter coat, mittens and toques and scarves, oh my! until halfway through December when I fled back to greener pastures, where a constant damp wind made Victoria feel much much colder than Ottawa. Still, I was triumphant - I had made it through the worst, a real winter out East, and I wouldn't be back until January when it would surely start warming up in a month and we'd be into a glorious spring, right? RIGHT?

Oh, January. You dirty bitch. I slept that month under two blankets, with wool socks on and a sweatshirt worn over my pyjamas. By some bizarro circumstance, the side of residence on which I lived had faulty heating; a solid layer of ice formed on the inside of the windows. On my birthday it was -50 with the wind chill. My family sent me a lovely care package with gifts and cookies and cards and roses...fresh-picked from the garden. I cried for half an hour.

But, again, what can you do but adapt and survive? I went outside as little as possible, made easier by the tunnel and walkway system to which my rez was attached; my personal record is six days without stepping foot outdoors. When I did have to go out I wore every article of clothing I owned. It wasn't pretty, but neither is freezing to death in a snowbank. And then, of course, there's the warming properties of alcohol.

And so January faded into February, and February into March, and and then April brought spring with it, which in Ottawa is a sort of lurching back and forth between winter and summer, as opposed to a season all its own, and then by May the Heat Miser was finally claiming victory over the Snow Miser and you start getting all excited because by this point you've actually forgotten what it feels like to be warm, and then June hits and you remember that it's just like in like in AvP, whoever wins...we lose.

And so I trade in my woolly underthings for halter tops, pack away the winter wardrobe and unpack the fans and prepare myself for being sweaty all the freakin’ time. At least I’ll get to see Fall again soon...