did you miss me?

I have been paralyzed with cold. The boilers in my building ceased to function and had to be replaced. We've been without heat in the apartments for over ten days.  New boilers were installed, and had to be tested and now they are slowly bringing on the heat.  My apartment is up to 12 degrees Celsius this morning, not warm enough for a sedentary person like me. I've been layering on the clothes: sweaters, shawls, blankets, and those nice little wristlets a friend knit for me. (You know who you are.)  It has been such an effort trying to be warm that I didn't seem to have enough energy to write a blog.  That made me think about our ancestors and how they managed to create.in cold weather.  Well, the creators could read and write and that meant they could afford not only an education but a good fireplace and servants to keep the fires going.  There are too many of us now, middle- (or lower-) class people who are educated and creative but who have to build their own fires.

At what temperature does a trained brain write well?   If overcome by torpor in tropical heat, the brain gets sticky and doesn't function speedily. If stiff in sympathy with the rigour of one's chilled  body, poor brain also doesn't function so well.  We are trapped in the temples of our bodies.  I guess if I were more disciplined, I'd have managed to create more than a great soup, but I wasn't and didn't. Instead I got depressed in direct proportion to my lethargy,  not fit to be tied to a cold computer. 

The darn thing is I can't complain.  When I think of the icy rescuers at L'Isle Verte trying to dig the bodies out the thick ice formed from the water in the fire hoses, I am totally aware that my discomfort is merely that, neither life-threatening nor permanently damaging.   I am alive and well and sort of grateful, though still shivering.  If only I could feel sorry for myself. 

remember spring?

I'm not one to complain, exactly, more like kvetch.  I like to think I'm placid but I'm not, really.  Right now I'm placid-aggressive, in despair but not noisy about it.  So I'm thinking about asparagus and strawberries. These days you don't have to go far to find such luxuries - used to be luxuries when they were rare treats..  Now they're available all seasons.  I can remember in the late spring, when the asparagus crops in Ontario were flourishing, how  heavenly it was to load a vegetable platter with all the colourful produce, the centrepiece of which was asparagus.  I used to love white asparagus, too, and revelled one springtime in Germany when the restaurants flashed their special neon signs - SPARGEL, SPARGEL, SPARGEL - and I could pig out on it.  And then I learned it had no chlorophyl whatsoever, no nutritional value at all, and felt so cheated.  Of course. A plant without sunshine is a plant without chlorophyl.  Another of life's little disappointments.

Strawberries are lovely, too, not only pretty but good for you, not as good as blueberries, though.  "They" say that blueberries are good for the memory. That conjures up a picture of the Tin Man, putting his finger to his head and coming up with a mathematical equation.  Eat a blueberry and memorize the Gettysburg Address with ease.  It wasn't easy.  I had to type it 47 times whenI was taking touch typing before I got it  error-free.  That had more to do with my eye-hand co-ordination of course, than with memory.  Anyway, strawberries: At the height of the season where they are indigenous, a bowl full of them makes the whole refrigerator smell of sugar.  That doesn't happen in January.  A strawberry in any other month does not smell as sweet. They're good dipped in chocolate, though.

Now chocolate you can count on.