Canada

Sunsets


I love to watch the sky these days. Hard as it is to believe, it is different from the one I watched back in Iowa.

My daughter and I have always been cloud watchers. On the drive to and from her daycare every morning, she would invariably point out some interesting shaping of the clouds or a particularly beautiful coloring of the sky they were set against. She loved to catch the sun and moon in the sky together in the early morning or in the early winter dusk. “The sun is chasing the moon,” she would tell me and sometimes make up a story to explain why this was so.

I have seen the moon at noon here in Alberta. It happens often Rob tells me. And I still can’t get over how it appears that the sky is closer to the ground or the way the horizon and the sky seem to meet on a curve. In July it is barely dusk at ten in the evening and some nights it seems as though the sun is merely a night-light for the world, never really setting but glowing like the embers of fire in the distance.

The other night the sunset was so beautiful that both Rob and I had to run outside with our cameras to snap a few photos. The pinks, purples and oranges just have to be seen by the naked eye because the camera lens just cannot do them justice.

I love it here.

It’s Not Typical


Yesterday it was over 30 C……in the house. I was actually sweating sitting still. As I sweltered, I remembered a certain Canadian telling me about the beautiful summer weather here in Alberta. The low relative humidity and basically milder temperatures in comparison to the sauna days of an Iowan summer. Yeah, that was all crap. It is just as nasty hot up here in the Great White North as every other place on this globally cooked planet. The difference between the Midwest and the western Provinces, though, is that back in the States we aren’t in denial about the weather. We have air-conditioned homes and here, the Edmonton paper gives people tips on how to use ice and fans to cool down rooms. 

Rob refers to me as a “weenie” when it comes to the heat. I take a tiny bit of exception to that. Until I bought my first home back in ’97, I had never had central air in my home or at work. The school buildings I worked in were old and barely had working heating systems, so AC was a fantasy. I can remember being nearly 8 months pregnant and simply informing my principal that he would need to find someone to cover my afternoon classes because the temperature in my classroom was well over 90, and I was going home. He simply replied, “Have a nice weekend.” Back in the days when my asthma was fairly mild, I loved to go for evening runs in the summer when it was so hot and humid it felt like being wrapped in a damp, steamy towel when you stepped outside. Sweat would be trickling down my arms and legs before I hit the end of the first block. It was nothing to knock out five or six miles on those runs and this was after a day spent at the pool with my friend and her young daughters. Swimming and diving. My summer wardrobe consisted on shorts and halters or bikini tops. I may have been born during the winter, but I was a summer baby at heart.

It was my asthma that killed my love of the dog days. Humidity of any kind is akin to slow suffocation. The accompanying congestion and coughing sent me in search of indoor activities and climate controlled venues. There is no AC  in the house where we are currently living, and to be fair it would be a waste of resources to install it. Heat waves here are short-lived, generally, and are an infrequent enough occurrence that people just ride them out. Kind of like we used to back in Dubuque when I was a kid. If it weren’t for the asthma, I would be less of a “weenie” (actually that is “weenie princess” according to my beloved who followed up that assessment of me with kisses and proclamations of how cute, lovable and utterly desirable it makes me.)  

Eddie and Brenda from across the street came over the other day to introduce themselves as I sat on the shaded front steps watching my daughter frolic under the Dora sprinkler. As is natural among the newly acquainted, the topic of weather came up. I was assured by both that the current baking we are receiving is not typical of a Canadian summer at this latitude. Not typical. Maybe not in the past. I think that it will likely become more the norm though, and that our next house is going to be centrally air-conditioned. (Rob says we are just going to keep moving north.)

Peeing: It’s not just a Roadside Thing



On the way into The Fort yesterday for the Canada Day celebrations, Rob pulled off into a canola field to answer nature’s call. I am beginning to take this in stride. I have certainly “seen” many an example of public urination in my time here to just chalk it up to the culture. Peeing at the side of the road, whether discretely as my love manages or with complete disregard as his best man showed when he  pee’d in the face of oncoming traffic on our caravan back from Jasper, is just a Canadian thing.

Knowing my fascination for the topic, Rob pointed out a news story in the Journal about the problem of drunken pub patrons relieving themselves in the doorways and alleys on Edmonton’s popular Whyte Avenue. Disgusted and in the hopes of stemming the tide, so to speak, business owners in that area are investing their own money in open-air plastic urinals. Three of these urinals, which can accommodate four men at a time, are going to be set up on the weekend nights in the busy club district downtown. Even though they will provide privacy to those seeking relief (something I am assured isn’t actually necessary in cases of emergency, drunkenness or a combination thereof), their backs will be exposed to those walking or driving by. In the interest of fairness, and to keep some desperate woman from attempting to use the urinals no doubt,  outhouses are also going to be provided.

You might be wondering if I have attempted to make the outdoors my personal potty again since coming here, and the answer is no. My husband is quite considerate and always manages to find me a sheltered facility  even if it is nothing more than an enclosed hole dug in the ground as rest area

facilities are in Saskatchewan. My daughter has yet to enjoy the wind on her bum as well. Although both Rob and I have mentioned to her the possibility of such a thing when we camp this summer, the look she has given us and her camel-like bladder lead me to believe that she has not assimilated to this point yet. 

Assimilation. And I thought it would be just getting used to French on the labels and signs.