Monday Morning Musings

Posted on February 22, 2021 under Monday Morning Musings with 2 comments

“Hell hath no fury like a province scorned.” Len MacDonald

Ok. I got the vaccine. Where did it come from? I’m not certain but many people in my home province of Nova Scotia have been giving me the gears suggesting that the shot I received was destined for Canada’s Ocean Playground but ended up in the frozen north. I promise I won’t needle you guys over my good fortune or give you an unfriendly jab. I hope today’s musings will be a shot in the arm to all my readers. OK. Let’s get to the point of this story.

Pleeeeeease stop it! I don’t want you to give me the cold shoulder because of my terrible puns. However, I will share this little tidbit with you. Prepare yourself to suffer some after affects if you get the Moderna dose. Just about all my friends to whom I’ve spoken (all 3 of them!) have had a sore upper arm after the needle for about 24 hours.  Someone even suggested that they had trouble raising a glass of beer to their lips. Oh, for goodness sake, why do you think the lord gave you two arms?

Seriously, I am very grateful to have received the first shot. According to medical experts, it could take a very long time before we reach herd immunity.

BTW. I loved Michael de Adder’s cartoon from last week about “Nova Scotians reacting to their vaccines being diverted to Canada’s North”.

Winter is skipping by. The days are getting longer. Spring is less than 4 weeks away. The weather has been fantastic lately. We’ve had days on end of sunshine, blue skies (except when the sky is on fire) and cold but not bitterly cold temperatures. Give me sunshine and cold temps any day rather than the yoyo weather of the Maritimes.

I have mentioned many times before the fact that a lot of things happen spontaneously up here without much advance warning. Last Friday morning, we found out that there was a wellness challenge sponsored by some organization somewhere. Any student who completed a 5km walk would receive a prize. We also discovered that the deadline to apply for prizes and complete the walk was Friday. The two grade 6 classes decided to do the walk that afternoon. We told our students to dress warmly when they came back to school after lunch. It was a breezy -38. I know that people in the south can’t imagine walking in these conditions but this is perfectly normal up here. One of my colleagues said that many winters ago, the temperature never rose above -50 for several weeks in a row. I still find it odd holding the end of a skipping rope in the play area when it’s -40.

Several students opted not to do the walk. A small, but hearty group left the school to head for the waterfalls, 2.5km from the school. Less than a third of the way along the route, the boys decided they’d had enough and packed it in. The other two teachers and I soldiered on with a group of young girls. We had a great time and we never heard a complaint. On our return to the school, the girls were rewarded with some of my homemade cookies. Girl power!!!

“Chips ahoy”.

Is it possible to write something about potato chips and make it interesting? Probably not. My grocery order arrived from the south last Friday evening. Now, we all know that a bag of chips is really a bag of air, with a few paltry chips thrown in for effect. The grocery store in the south (god love them) always packs the chips in a box of their own so that they don’t get crushed. Potato chips are one of those things that are very expensive in the grocery stores up here. I opened the small box and extricated bag #1. Unbeknownst to me, one end of the bag was opened and when I went to transport it to the cupboard, the entire contents emptied out onto the kitchen floor. I was mildly flustered which quickly turned to consternation as the second bag did the same thing. Why, you ask, didn’t you check the second bag? I don’t know about you, but I don’t routinely check bags of potato chips to see if the end is open. Now I had two full bags of chips on the floor. Thankfully, I am a decent housekeeper and keep the floors swept daily so I scooped them up and put them back in the bags. I’m guessing that the air pressure in the plane’s cargo bay caused the bags to explode.

I guess you could say that I am a “chip off the old block” as our parents told us that wasting was a sin.

Have a great week.

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