Cold creatures.

It all started the week before Christmas. Slowly but surely, the house started feeling colder and colder. With overnight temperatures falling close to -20, I thought it was normal to feel the cold. Noelie wasn't too impressed though, neither was Marie but with a few extra layers, it wasn't something that was too much of a problem. I come from a hot (ish) climate but I'm also used to cold winters but this was nothing I had ever experienced. Some of the rooms in the house were like walk-in freezers, the playroom's entrance had been condemned. I put it down to the size of the house and the number of big windows, thinking that the cold was getting in that way. The tips of our noses were frozen, our hands were red with the cold and not to mention my feet, who despite being in 2 pairs of socks (one of which a pair of ski socks) and a pair of Fuggs refused to warm up. I noticed that some of the rads were not working well and tried to come up with various explanations. The obvious one was that we probably ran out of oil. I tried ordering some more but the earliest they could deliver was well after Christmas day, and if things went according to plan, we wouldn't be in Ireland then.

The day we left for France, I gave the girls a bath and resorted to get both of them dressed in the warmest room of the house, the hot press. Thankfully, our hot press is more of a walk-in wardrobe than your traditional hot press so getting dressed in there was easy enough.

Then we left for our 2 weeks holiday. I had made sure that the heating was left on for a couple of hours a day, to ensure that the pipes would not freeze, I didn't go as far as leaving the taps running though. When we came back a couple of days ago, knowing that the house wouldn't be very warm, we had arranged for the girls to stay at Mr Foodie's mum and dad's for a bit, hence giving me time to get everything unpacked and the house cleaned and warmed up.

This was not to happen. The day we got back, the house was so cold that I kept my big heavy ski jacket on until I eventually gave up piling up the blankets on my legs on the sofa and went to bed fully clothed. Mr Foodie was very grateful for the pair of skiing thermal long johns he had bought in France. He has now earned the nickname of Robin Hood, Men in Tights after parading around my parent's house in them, demonstrating his fashion - showmanship (is that even a word?) for all to admire.

The day after we got back I ordered oil which was to be delivered yesterday. In the meantime, Mr Foodie and myself piled on the thermal ski clothes we had the great mind of buying in France. We went to bed around 7pm for a couple of nights and started watching the first season of 24 on DVD from the box set Mr Foodie received at Christmas. Getting up in the morning was a nightmare, there is nothing worse on a good day than leaving a nice warm bed knowing it's cold outside, multiply that feeling by at least a million and you might have an idea of what it's like to get up in a cold, freezing house. At some stage, I actually thought it was warmer outside than it was inside!

The oil came yesterday and, to my surprise, there was still some left in the tank, indicating that the problem was not it (doh!). We truly had a problem with our heating system. We called our landlord who showed up within the next 30 minutes, tool box in hand. In the meantime, Mr Foodie's mum and dad had arrived with the girls and our 8 month old niece. The house was so cold that Marie kept her jacket on, only to take it off in favour of her house coat and a pair of gloves and snuggled under her duvet (at 4.30 pm). Our landlord tried to fix the problem but, since he is not a plumber, couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. He got in contact with a plumber he knows, who promised to come out to the house first thing in the morning. The girls went back to Mr Foodie's mum and dad's for the night as there was no way they could stay in the freezer that our house had become.

True to his word, the plumber was at the door at 9h15 this morning. After a good look around, he identified that the problem came from the pump. Some valve on it wasn't tightening properly and needed changing. He went off to get a new valve and came back with it. He took the whole thing apart and put it back together with the new valve. The only thing was that he left the back door open all the time. The malfunctioning valve was causing the pressure to fall, meaning that the hot water wasn't being pushed through the rads and the rads weren't heating up. Once he had fixed the pump, he put the heating back on and carefully made sure that every single rad in the house was working. At that stage, I was shivering with cold and my knees were refusing to stop shaking. Our landlord supervised the whole operation which took more than 2 hours. So now, the house is warming up slowly but surely, I am glued to one of the rads and will probably need to be peeled off it in a bit. How did people do it before? Before central heating, before thermal underwear and fleeces? I truly don't know and really admire them. I'm not a cold creature, neither are my girls. Warmth is what we need and thank goodness, warmth is what we will now get! Now, I'm off to put my bikini on!

P.S: Happy new year everybody (I'm not a big Christmas and New Year greetings fan, so please don't hold it against me!)

I should have kept my mouht shut

I knew it! I should have kept my big mouth shut! If I hadn't posted yesterday about how all that snow is starting to really annoy me now, it wouldn't have snowed again. I'm sure of it.

But, no. I had to go and open my mouth and say that I was kind of getting sick of it. And what happens? Well another good 5 to 10 cm fell overnight. Seriously, it is starting to get boring now! And I can't even do my grocery shopping online as the next delivery slot available is for Friday! Friday, we have time to die of starvation by then (although we won't because the freezer is well stocked) but I'm starting to run out of fresh stuff.

It took Mr Foodie 20 minutes to get out of the garden this morning to go to work. His tracks from yesterday afternoon had all disappeared. The snow is half way up the wheels of my own useless, dead car.

But what I find amazing is the fact that we keep being told that the worse is over, no more snow. Temperatures will go up by the week end and it will all start thawing. Yeah, right! I think the weather people are at this stage as believable as that stupid government. And what about after the week end, they don't seem to be as confident about what's going to happen then. More snow, colder temperatures? Or just a big thaw that will bring on some floods? Nobody knows.

I keep thinking about people in Nordic countries (Hi Heather!), they are well used to plummetting temperatures and snow and ice. So why can't we just get used to it? Why can't we just even be prepared for it? You know, snow chains and snow tyres? Life doesn't stop in those countries, schools don't have heating problems, or burst pipes. Life goes on. Even in the South of France, we are used to snow and ice and cold weather, they do sell snow chains and winter tyres. The year my brother was born (yes, Mr Foodie, the great cold of 84), temperatures in the South of France plumetted to -20. School was open, people went to work, roads were adequately treated. Shops sell snowsuits for as little as 20 euros. So why, can't we deal with it the same way here? Why can't we look at nordic countries, or Canada and take advice from them. See how they do things and learn from it? But no, we let it bring the country to a standstill and we keep using old methods such as salt and sand on the roads. By the way, did you know that salt is useless if temperatures fall beneath -8?

Argh, it's just so frustrating. One thing I know though, is that I will be hitting the French sales in January and I will be getting proper snowsuits and snowboots for the girls. Because I'm sure that this is not the end of it, I'm sure that before the end of this winter, we will have more snow and more ice. And we will be in the same predicament we are in at the moment. The difference is: I will be prepared.

Snow and Ice and all the things nice.

I thought I would ride out the whole Big Freeze thing but it looks inevitable now. I have to write about it because there is nothing else to talk about it seems (well at least until tomorrow, when the harshest budget of the history of the Republic of Ireland will knock us all out). 

I have been stuck in since last Monday. I ordered my shopping online for the first time ever and it was delivered on Tuesday, thankfully since a good 10 inches of snow fell on Tuesday evening, making the roads barely passable from Wednesday on. Still on Wednesday, Mr Foodie managed to go to work, just about, but he abdicated on Thursday and Friday and stayed home. School closed on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

We had a great snowball fight on Tuesday evening with the neighbours. Wednesday, Marie went sleighing with the neighbours and some of their friends, in the field next to us. And Thursday, Mr Foodie and Marie went out to try and build a snowman. They just about made the body before giving up, it was too cold. The fire has been blazing everyday from early in the morning, the heating has been on a good while and I lived in fear that we would run out of oil as the weathermen and women announced temperatures of -13.

Our neighbour drove me to the Post Office in the landlord's agricultural Jeep so that I could collect my pittance since nothing had yet been put in place to accommodate people who were snowed in. We stayed in all week end, Mr Foodie only venturing out to get bread and milk. Cabin fever set in on Friday and I escaped for an hour or so to deliver some cinnamon rolls to the neighbour and get out a bit, albeit not far at all.

This morning, things were more or less back to normal, we still have about 10 to 15 cm of snow out, the roads are extremely icy, but Mr Foodie went to work, and Marie's school reopened. So we muffled up and walked down to school, since my car has refused to start since Thursday. I looked like I was doing some kind of cross country skiing rather than walking and people who had the courage to take the car were laughing at me, but it was a lot better than Tuesday when Noelie and myself nearly ended up in the ditch along the road a fair few times. I'll take ice over fresh snow any day now, when it comes to pushing the buggy. I didn't plan on repeating the experience until later on this afternoon but we received a text asking us to collect our children immediately as the heating was not working in the school. So much for being back to normality! And school will be closed again tomorrow although this was planned since September.

Noelie has been fascinated at the snow, spending hours on end looking outside when it was falling. We took her out walking in it and she thought it was great fun, although a bit cold for her liking. We have been baking, cooking, reading, watching TV, knitting everyday. The days have felt extremely long and we found ourselves in bed by 10h30 most nights. And it has been boring, I have to admit.

The snow doesn't seem to want to go anywhere and we now wake up to lovely frosty mornings. So much so that this morning I had to take out my ridiculously ridiculous camera (bring on Christmas so I can get my proper one!) and I had to take pictures. Hope you like them! I am now seriously running out of ideas on how to entertain the girls, there is only so much starring out the window we can do! If you have any ideas, please feel free to let me know!

PS: Sorry if this post seems a bit like random thoughts. It is exactly what it is. I have Noelie stuck to my leg looking for biscuits and Marie hovering about telling me that she's bored. Help!!!!

Let it snow.

I realized today that this year is the first in many years that I actually get to enjoy the snow.

When I was still living in France, I used to go skying pretty much every year. I was lucky enough in the sense that the mountains were only a couple of hours away. Now when I say mountains, I mean MOUNTAINS, big ones with 3 months of snow a year if not more, and skying slopes and peaks. When somebody mentioned the Dublin Mountains to me, I remember thinking 'mountains?! What mountains?! these are only hills.' Which is exactly what my parents said to me when I mentioned to them the ''mountains''.

When it snowed last year, I didn't get to enjoy it. It lengthened my journey home from work and still I was one of the lucky ones making the 5 miles journey in about 1h30 (taking into account that I used to finish work at 18h00, I didn't really appreciate to get home that late). I was 4 months pregnant at the time and the 2nd half of the journey was spent wishing I could go to the toilet. Once I managed to get out of the car, I was terrified that I would slip and fall. We also were living in an apartment which meant no garden for Marie to play in, an underground car park with frozen ramps and a non existent management company to grit either the ramps or the paths around the block. The only fun we had was watching the cars trying to get up the hill onto which the apartment block was located.

This year however it is all different. I find snow quite hypnotic. While cleaning the spare bedroom in preparation for my parents' arrival tomorrow (fingers crossed, as there is a severe weather warning in the south of France tonight), I regularly stopped, just to stare out the window for minutes at a time, watching the flakes falling and accumulating on the ground. I didn't get to do everything I wanted to do but I worked doubly hard today and made up for it.

I really enjoy the whole ritual that comes with preparing for going out for a walk in the snow. I love wrapping the kids up warm, making sure that their coats are zipped up and that their scarf is well wrapped, not too tight but not too loose, that their hats are on right and that their gloves or mittens are well paired. What I enjoyed the most today was strapping Noelie in her buggy and piling up the blankets on her, to make sure she was nice and toasty for our stroll down the shops.

I enjoy that first breath of cold, brisk and seemingly cleaner air, well wrapped in my big jacket with my hat, scarf and gloves. I love the sounds that shoes make on the snow, either screeching or crunching, when all other sounds seem to be muffled, when life seems calmer and quieter. I love the purity of the colour, when houses look like they have also wrapped up and put a white hat on. I love the footprints left in the snow, reminders that people walk those paths everyday yet leave no trace of it. I love feeling the cold biting my nose.

But most of all, I love coming back into the warmth of the house, lighting a nice fire, making a nice cup of hot chocolate or soup, and warming ourselves up. Looking at Marie and Noelie's rosy cheeks, feeling my ears burning when they warm up, and looking out the window to the flakes falling, or to the kids chasing each other, throwing snowballs, building snowmen.

I think that snow brings out the child in adults as they walk and playfully throw snowballs at each other. It slows the world down, as well as the cars. But it also has its downsides and I can't help thinking about people that it isolates, or people that suffer from the cold.

This year, however, I do get to enjoy it and it brings back memories, those of a time when snow was only a couple of hours away.