Tag Archives: Snowstorm

Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Things I Like to Do on Stormy Days

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A woman playfully blowing snow out of her hands. She is wearing thick gloves and a warm hat and coat while standing in the woods in winter, so the effect is lighthearted and she doesn’t look the least bit cold. Winters here in Ontario have been milder than usual these past few years. When we do get cold, stormy weather, here are some of the things I like to do to amuse myself during them:

Read

This one is pretty obvious, and I’m betting most of you are going to mention it, too.

 

Play in the Snow for About 20 Minutes.

I love being an outdoorsy person when the weather is mild, but not so much when it’s painfully cold or hot outside. So about 20 minutes of building a snowman or walking around to admire the beauty of winter is my idea of a good time before I go back indoors to warm up.

 

Watch Movies

I think that psychological horror films are a great match for snowy winter days when it’s far too blustery to be outdoors if you don’t have to be.

There’s something delicious about getting scared silly while the wind beats against your window. It’s so easy to imagine there might really be a monster lurking out there just beyond the blur of the storm, after all!

If I’m watching movies with someone who doesn’t like anything scary at all, other genres like historical, documentaries, or comedies can work perfectly nicely, too. Just don’t ask me to watch anything involving people being cold.

Hypothermia isn’t something I like to think about when the weather outside is frightful. Let’s find something lighthearted, educational, or thought provoking instead.

 

Cook or Bake Food 

I prefer making warm, hearty things like soup, stew, chili, roasted vegetables,  banana bread, or chocolate chip cookies during winter storms. There’s nothing like slowly noticing your home filling up with delicious scents on a stormy day.

 

A black woman dancing joyfully while listening to something on her headphones. She’s wearing jeans and a pink t-shirt. Dance

Am I a good dancer? Heh, not really, but I love learning new dance routines through the magic of the Internet. You don’t have to be good at something in order to enjoy it, after all.

This is a nice way to get some exercise in when you’re stuck indoors all day, and it’s a great way to pass the time as well if you see the snow piling up outdoors and start feeling restless.

I’ll dance to all sorts of types of music, but I find that hip-hop, Bollywood, and Zumba-style dances tend to get my heart pumping the best.

So if I’m dancing as my exercise routine for the day, I tend to start with those styles because I have specific goals about reaching certain heartbeat rates that I try to meet for my cardio workouts.

If it’s just for fun, anything will do. Every sort of dance is a good sort in my book!

 

Play Board Games, Card Games, or Do Jigsaw Puzzles

There are some games I try to save for days when the weather is bad or when I have a cold and need something quiet to do as I recover.

Bodies need exercise, and so does your mind! I’m perfectly happy to play games of luck that don’t require any thinking, too, but I also enjoy the challenge of solving a puzzle or figuring out who killed Professor Plum in the conservatory and what weapon they used as well.

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Whimsical Winter: A Review of Memoirs of a Snowflake

Book cover for Memoirs of a Snowflake by Joe Vasicek. The cover is a pretty light purple colour, and it has four large snowflakes, four medium sized snowflakes, and dozens of tiny little snowflakes falling down on what I presume is a night sky on it. It gives the feeling of standing outside and feeling the snow fall onto your face and hands during an early morning or sunset snowstorm. Title: Memoirs of a Snowflake

Author: Joe Vasicek

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: March 22, 2011

Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary

Length: 9 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

The life and times of a December snowflake.

Every death is a rebirth. Every end is a new beginning. Though I do not know what awaits me as I leave my cloud-mother, I am not afraid.

Review:

Snowflakes have feelings, too!

This was such a creative take on sentient snowflakes and what might really go on in a snowstorm if it were comprised of millions of individuals who all have strong feelings about where they end up as they fall from the clouds above. I found myself smiling and nodding along as I followed the main character’s journey from their cloud-mother to their destination on the land below. There’s not much else I can say without giving away spoilers, but I enjoyed the plot twist once it arrived.

I found myself wishing that a bit more time had been spent explaining snowflake society. For example, do snowflakes get to be reborn as water droplets during the warm months of the year? How are they born already knowing so much about their short lives and what awaits them once they melt? A few more pages of exposition would have convinced me to go for a full five-star rating as I loved everything else about this tale.

The metaphysical portions of the plot played a big role in making this such an unforgettable read. The cycle of life and death and how we should all respond to it weren’t topics I would expect a snowflake in the fantasy genre to think about, much less use to guide them during their brief life. The juxtaposition of xenofiction and philosophy here was delightful, and it has encouraged me to keep an eye out for more of Mr. Vasicek’s work in the future.

Be sure to read the author’s notes about how he came up with the idea for this story as well. They were included after the final scene and provided yet another layer of meaning to the plot.

Memoirs of a Snowflake was a peaceful metaphysical adventure.

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Filed under Science Fiction and Fantasy

Mindfulness During a Snowstorm

black and white photo of person walking alone on a city sidewalk during a snowstormJanuary is the quietest time of year in Ontario.

Life slows down here quickly once this month begins.Not only have the majority of the big winter holidays have passed by, the weather itself isn’t terribly conducive to driving anywhere even before this pandemic began.

The overnight temperature can dip to -25 Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) or colder, and we often have sleet and snowstorms taking turns making slippery messes of our roads and sidewalks.

There is nothing like sitting next to the windows in my home and watching the snow blanket everything on those days.

Sometimes it falls so quickly that buildings on the other side of the street have been transformed into dark blurs of colour behind a shimmery white veil of snow. Anything past that point is so smudged beyond recognition that I wouldn’t know what it was at all if I weren’t already familiar with it.

My mindful approach to these days is something that started early in life. Let’s meander for a while.

Quiet Snow Days

These storms remind me of the years I spent growing up in a small town in Wyoming. Sometimes it snowed so heavily that all of the highways and other roads going into and out of town were closed. Residents were asked to only use local roads for emergencies, so almost everyone stayed home and waited out the weather.

two wooden cottages almost totally covered in snow

The snow was this deep in the nearby mountains, but not quite so heavy where I lived.

I was a slim, petite kid. For a while I remained just barely light enough to walk on top of snowbanks that had partially melted and then frozen again.

Those moments were pure magic and required no thoughts flitting through my mind at all while I carefully walked without leaving a trace in the snow.

These snowy days of the present also remind me of a massive blizzard many of us on the eastern half of North America experienced in the late 1990s.

It happened as my family was moving across town, so I had many opportunities to see the snow as my parents were driving and in the yards of both our old and new homes.

My siblings and I had our typical two weeks off from school for the Christmas holidays that year. It began snowing heavily right before we were scheduled to return to school. For the next two weeks, school was cancelled one day after the next.

Sometimes it would be delayed by an hour or two before being cancelled. Other days were so stormy that everything was cancelled immediately. I remember waiting quietly for the news each morning with no expectations since our superintendent was normally so reticent to cancel school despite how much time it took the county to salt and plow all of the rural roads that would bring students back to class eventually.

Once the announcement was made, there was often a moment of silence as I wondered how I should fill my time on yet another unexpected day since we were between semesters and I’d finished the homework we’d been given before Christmas break began.

Then a few of the members of my household would either drive across town to our old house to take another van full of stuff to the new one (if the town roads were cleared and salted recently enough for this to be safe), go shovel off the roof,* or put a previous load of stuff away.

*It was an old, flat roof in some places. That snowstorm was so heavy and never-ending my parents were afraid the roof would be damaged if they didn’t clear it off.

Snow Encourages Mindfulness

Even beyond these personal experiences, snow itself encourages silence. It dampens sound as explained in this post.

close-up photo of a snowflake Have you ever taken an outdoor walk during or after a big snowstorm? Whether you live in a big city, a small town, or miles away from the nearest neighbour, the world becomes a much quieter place after a storm like that.

All of that snow acts like insulation. Everything from bird chirps to the roar of a river (if it hasn’t already frozen over) to the rumble of a truck driving down the road is quieter than it normally would be.

Even the soft crunch of boots walking on fresh snow is quieter than normal.

If you’ve never experienced this sort of moment in time, I hope you’ll have a chance to try it someday.

The world is such a quiet, solemn place then that I find it easy to walk without thinking. Nearly all of the familiar landmarks in my area will still be recognizable during or after a big storm, but their edges are softened and muted.

I live in an urban area where it is pretty safe to walk outside even during the heaviest snowstorms, so sometimes I’ll go stand on the sidewalk (far away from the road) and watch the snow cling to everything from skyscrapers to my glasses.

In those moments, there is no need for words or thoughts. The snow will end when it ends. Until then, I sit indoors or stand outdoors and marvel at the feeling of snowflakes coating my hair, coat, boots, and every other surface they can possible reach in this corner of the world.

If you have snow where you live, how do you react to it?

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Filed under Mindfulness and Meditation