Sick and tired

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 8
10/30/08
0500

I’m sitting here at 5 a.m. in a Benadryl haze, looking out into the frosty Minnesota dark. For the first time –literally- in my life I’ve left work early, just too sick to go on. It’s just too hard to deal cards when they’re covered in snot. My body feels like it’s just been thrown a blanket party, my head feels filled with sand, and there’s just one thing on my mind: Winter is coming.

It was cold last night, that shocking kind of cold that takes your lungs by surprise. Autumn here crashed quickly, came and went before it ever really started. One day the trees were full and green, the next they were empty. It was like the earth simply shrugged out of its clothes. The bare trees have made the drive into town a different experience. Entire neighborhoods that I didn’t even know existed revealed themselves once the leaves were gone. A world beneath the world. I even discovered that I have a neighbor. One day I looked into the woods behind my garage, and hey, there’s a house across the ravine. Suddenly I wonder about all those times at 2 a.m. I was naked on the porch screaming at dogs.

Winter is coming. The people around here are quietly battening hatches. Plastic is going up over windows. Plows are appearing on the fronts of every third pickup. Pyramids of deicer suddenly pop up at every retail outlet. After a few easy winters, the Minnesotans are smelling a bad one. I’m getting a lot of ‘New to the area?” followed by smirks and giggles. C’mon. It’s not like we moved here from Arizona. I know about winter.

Still. There’s things I need to do. Hatches of my own to take care of. Just secured a nice 4WD beater to buzz around in for the next few months. It occurs to me that I need a chainsaw, because if a tree goes down on the road back here, we’re pretty much fooked. And I’m swallowing my pride and getting a snowblower. I’ve always scoffed at those douchepackers in their little suburban developments, blowing the snow off their 13-foot patch of concrete, vowed to never be one of those. Well, this ain’t no development. However the hell I get down my .6 mile of dirt road, a shovel will not be involved.

The sky is purpling now, sun coming soon. Any time now the deer and squirrels will be out, stuffing themselves on the buckets of whole corn I’ve thrown. They have to fatten themselves up. Winter is coming.

Mother buggin' bugs

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 7
10/14/08
13:50

Halfway through October, and it's 70 degrees here in Minnesota. Needless to say, I'll take it. The leaves are falling, the wind is blowing, and so far this has been as nice an autumn as I can remember. One problem. Ladybugs. Our porch is closed in with 12 5-by-4 screened windows and last weekend I woke up to find every inch of the screens covered in the little orange bastards. This is INSIDE, mind you:

It sucks. Thousands of the spotted pricks. We used to keep all the doors and windows open, but now we have to button the house up because I'm afraid I'll wake up to find every surface looking like Lindsay Lohan's ass. We had this problem one fall in Akron, but nothing like we got here. I realize one cold snap will be the little buggy holocaust, but then I'll have to deal with this on a grand scale:

Even with the nice weather, they die off in legions, covering the porch floor in tiny carcasses that snap like bubble wrap when you step on them. Which wouldn't be all bad if they didn't let loose such a stank when they get crushed. The smell is something like dirt, socks and old Doritoes. Hundreds die every night, hundreds more replace them. Geh. You walk outside, something lands on the back of your neck, you swat it and now you smell like an old man’s feet. And they keep coming. Even little Tulip’s chin is susceptible:

Sigh. Bring on the winter.

Bound to happen...

Great White Dispatch
Notes from Damn Near Canada
No. 6
10/07/08
12:47

Good god, but I’m starting to miss Akron. It’s not that I’m homesick exactly, but six weeks into the move I’m finally recognizing things about the ‘Kron that were high on my ‘cool’ list.

When we left Ohio, we left in a cloud of dust, no regrets, no looks back. Other than the odd visit, I know we ain’t ever moving back to Ohio barring some catastrophe. It’s just too nice here, too damn beautiful. When you live in a place that others come for vacations, you know you’ve chosen well.

Still.

I woke this morning with a terrible urge for a bowl of Panera’s cream of chicken and wild rice soup, a nice hunk of their bread and a good cup of Panera coffee. But ha-ha, joke’s on me because the nearest Panera is 45 minutes away. There are decent coffee shops in town, but I wanted something specific, and I couldn’t have it without wasting half a day and 20 bucks in gas. God damn, but I miss the I-77 corridor. I miss not just being able to get anywhere in 10 minutes, but three anywheres in 10 minutes. I miss Chapel Hill, Montrose and Belden. Hell, at this point I miss Rolling Acres.

Also, I miss Starbucks. I’m pretty sure Minnesota is the only place in the world where you can drive for an hour and not find a Starbucks. The ‘Bucks saturation in Akron was beyond silly, and I realize that most of you reading this are likely haters, but there’s really nothing like a nice caramel macchiato waiting practically next door on a Saturday morning. Caribou Coffee just don’t cut it.

I miss the way-too-high ratio of comic shops to square mileage. I miss Time Traveler and the Buckeye Bookshop. I miss high-speed internet access. I miss internet access at all during rainy days. I miss hearing the voices of my people, seeing faces that I already know. I miss our garden and all our flowers. I miss our little oasis amongst all that concrete. Our yard here is nicer than anything in Akron, but out here it’s just another place. I realize that this makes no sense. In time, probably soon, this place will be home. But it ain’t there yet.

On the other hand, it’s pouring as I type this and I know that when the rain is finished the bluffs will look pretty god damned amazing peeking through the mist and even during the storm there’s about fifteen things worth photographing right out my kitchen window. Oh, and this guy spends a lot of time in our front yard....

I guess it’s more than a fair trade.