It’s -27°C in Ottawa this morning — -35°C with the wind chill — and honestly too cold for me to go out if I don’t want to cough all night. The CBC news at 0600 hr was mostly about weather, from Ukrainians struggling to survive Russian strikes on their energy infrastructure to the huge storm forecast for most of the United States, to Winnipeg homeless shelters flinging their doors open 24 hours a day to help their clients avoid frostbite. Edmund’s aphorism about “no bad weather, only inadequate clothing” fails when skin freezes with three minutes of exposure. And no, a balaclava ski mask is not the answer: everyone has to breathe, and a mask just gets clogged with ice.

So the “adequate clothing” for today is a house. A house with a furnace or reasonable facsimile thereof.

I got my grocery shopping done yesterday when the wind scouring Loblaw’s parking lot was merely nasty, not actually dangerous. ‘Tis the season for turnips in mustard sauce, winy beef stew brightened with chopped parsley, and buckling down to read the New Yorker from cover to cover.