The sun is bright and the sky is blue in Ottawa this morning, which in February means that it’s freakin’ cold. The snowbanks are as high as an elephant’s eye, and frozen slush makes a hazard zone of every parking lot. The car is filthy, due to said slush thrown up by the wheels of every vehicle on the road, and there’s absolutely no point in washing it for a while yet. My lined jeans were in the wash yesterday, so I had to wear longjohns to church for the first time in ten years. Crows and chickadees are the only birds I see on a given day. Tracks in the snow on my porch indicate reconnaissance by the local raccoons. My next-door neighbour’s never-driven car nestles in snow up to its windows, with a foot more piled on the roof.

The forecast for today indicates a high of — gasp! — -8°C this afternoon, so I shall go for a walk in the park. Cabin fever is real, and it’s all too easy to frowst in the house for weeks while waiting for conditions to improve. At New Year I vowed to get outside on foot whenever the thermometer crawled above -10°C, and today looks like my first chance in way too long.

But first, I must put away the laundry and vacuum the Persian carpets in the sitting room and the bunker.

Watson (aging tomcat) has decided that trudging to the litter box is too much to ask if the urge for a piss hits him when he’s upstairs, so he uses the bathtub. I have decided that he’s doing me a favour; we’ve had the alternative and it was expensive.