Snowy Sabbatical

I’ve made it more than half a block from my building exactly once in the past seven days: last Saturday, when, for a glorious few hours between snowstorms, the sidewalks were clear enough to navigate on my power wheelchair.

And then, on my way home from the thrift store (I’m on the hunt for nice sheets, especially linen or vintage ones, to practise sewing with—if you have any you want to part with, shoot me a message!), large flakes began drifting down from the heavens, covering my toque and lap with a layer of sparkly white that might’ve seemed magical if it hadn’t portended what I knew was on its way.

If I thought I’d dodged an extended period of forced winter confinement this year, I was sorely mistaken. The Greater Toronto Area got more snow in the space of a week than it did the entire winter of 2023–2024, and there’s more coming today. It’s … a lot. In all senses of that term.

I’ve been mostly proud of how I’ve handled a difficult situation, but my patience is wearing thin. It was easier to see this as an adventure when everyone was in the same boat. On Sunday and Monday, during the worst of it, most of the city ground to a near-halt. It was kind of cozy. Fun, even. The days flew by. Now, though, the more mobile among us have resumed everyday life, albeit a colder, less convenient version of it. And I’m stuck inside.

Again, I’ve managed this as best I could’ve hoped I might, and I keep reminding myself to be gentle with myself when the stir-craziness takes over and I want to scream out the window into the icy void. I’ve tried to frame this as a snowy sabbatical—an opportunity to buckle down and focus on writing, sewing, and other tasks I neglect when the call of adventure is to enticing to ignore—and this has been a pretty effective strategy. A rewarding one, too, since I’ve indeed been more productive than I usually am. Still, it’s hard. Really hard, and I see no end in sight. (I just read that the city is saying it could be three weeks before snow removal is complete. Sigh.)

I’m sure I’ll write several more woe-is-me posts in the days to come, and I’m not even going to apologize because I have to distract myself somehow, after all. So I’ll keep this short and sweet, ending by again patting myself on the back for maintaining a relatively positive attitude and staying surprisingly busy for someone marooned at home. By the time this is over, I’ll have a wardrobe of sheetwear (not to be confused with streetwear), a four-foot stack of novels I’ve read, a spotless house, a fifty-page manuscript, and a very long list of places I’ll go as soon as I’m able.