Hallelujah! God Bless The Child Who Suffers
I know I'm not exactly who Shania Twain was thinking of when she wrote this song, but this is my blog, so I'm gonna whinge as much as I like.
I took this photo out of commiseration to myself. This is town square looking suspiciously snow-less that sunday evening.
As we made our way home though, some of the patches of snow started to reappear. When we got home, I could see actual snow from the window. I was getting delirious by this point. This was it.
I'm proud to announce that after 6071 days, 4 hours and 27 minutes of waiting, I, Kathryn Barrett, touched snow for the first time.That's 8,742,507 minutes total, ie, a really freaking long time. To put that in perspective, You could watch 194278 episodes of Doctor who in that time, if you don't mind rewatching a few...
When I got out of the car, I had my phone in hand to record my first encounter with the sky ice. It was a bit overwhelming. I could feel the crunching beneath my feet, and I touched the strange powdery snow covering everything in a thick white blanket. I was so happy that I laughed until I cried. Literally. I think I freaked out the family a tad, as they became a little worried for my mental health. As much as I wanted to play in the snow, Nina insisted I at least come in for dinner before venturing out.
Dinner over and done with, Mathilde went upstairs to do her homework, while Freddy and I suited up. I ended up looking like the michelin man, in multiple layers of down and a thick jumpsuit.
We then ventured outside, and freddy grabbed a plastic kids sled for me to sit on while he pulled me down the driveway, which was on a slight slope. When we got to the bottom however, it became apparent that they don't work so well up hill. It was at this point that I felt the need to throw a snowball at Freddy. Big mistake. I had accidently initiated World War Freddy, and we spent the next hour running around and throwing snowballs like it was extreme dodgeball. I attempted a snowman at one point, however it turns out that dogs will eat anything you touch, so it ended up with the brutal murder of Mr Snowman.
Freddy had warned me previously about the "washing" I was destined to receive after I had thrown pieces of frost at him a few weeks back. Apparently it was time to collect.
"Washing", for those of you that are uneducated on the subject, is where one party is held down, and the other takes a handful of snow and rubs it in their face in a plate-scrubbing motion, thus "washing" the subjects face with the freezing substance. This also means that melted snow (ie hella cold water) then runs down your neck / back and infiltrates the fortus of "warmatude" that you so painstakingly created.
That said, it was actually really hot inside all those layers after running around for an hour, and at one point freddy stripped himself of his warm layers and ended up in just a tee-shirt.
I tried to get some pictures, but the night made it pretty difficult.
During our intense snowball fight, it began showing heavily, like confetti from the sky. It was so pretty.
Eventually we had to go back inside, but the snow excitement continued the next night.
After a day of school, Freddy and I took the bus to the city and grabbed some pastries (they were delish) and then caught up with Mathilde. She took us to a Cafe that was apparently the "hangout spot" for the kids at her hipster school. It was pretty sick, with a whole wall of board games, wifi, guitars available to play and all sorts of hipster eclectic things. I ordered a chai latte, and when it arrived it had the Batman symbol on it. It's pretty safe to say that this is one of the best cafes ever.
Freddy left then to go to the dentist, and Mathilde and I walked to the Music school for orchestra. On the way I took many daylight snow photos-
After orchestra and dinner, Freddy and I embarked on a new mission- Sledding down a local hill. Mathilde had come down with a bad cold, and couldn't join us like planned, so it was just the two of us that made our way to the barn to collect two sleds. We had the plastic kids one, but we grabbed a second wooden one as well.
The wooden one was a tad broken and we set about to fix it.
It was at this point I discovered one thing I was better at then freddy.
I had looked at the old wood, and seen that it was brittle. I told freddy that he should pre-drill a hole and then put in the screw to avoid making the wood split, but Freddy, all pumped up on male bravado and an apparent "can't be bothered" attitude, deemed the first step unnecessary. Long story short, the wood split, every single time he rammed a screw into it. I told him next time I would handle the drill and he could stick to ducktape.
After a lengthy walk dragging the heavy thing up a slight hill, including a quick jump over an electric fence, we made it to the hill. Freddy went first, head torch lighting his path. As it turns out, sledding on freshly fallen snow the first time sucks. Sitting on the bright pink plastic sled, freddy's first ride was massively impeded by the friction provided by the fluffy pile of snow, and he had to use his arms to drag himself down the hill like a sad seal on land. I cracked up as his sarcastic "weeee!!!!"'s echoed around the valley. After a lengthy trudge back up the fairly steep hill, it was my turn. Thanks to freddy's first slide, there was a path of compacted snow that created the perfect run for me. Unfortunately, I apparently suck at steering, as I went careering off the side of the past almost immediately. It seems that to go left one must lean right, completely counter-intuitively.
Eventually we managed to have a few decent slides each, but we were knackered from walking up the massive hill. When we got back home, Mathilde joined us and we played some card games that I sucked at. I did teach Freddy 'speed' for you scouty ones reading this.
I set my alarm early for the next day, as we had to leave by seven to go pick Helene up from the airport.
That's all for today folks!
Be kind to one another <3
Btw, the title refers to the longevity of my wait for snow in the blistering heat of Australia. Thank you, that is all.