Yesterday’s post seemed to bring a little confusion to my gentle American friends.

Cold temperatures generally leave me a wee confused so I’m not totally surprised.

But it seems a great deal of you don’t know what we Canadians put on our heads to keep our brains from freezing into ice blocks.

That would be a TOQUE people.

This is a toque:

Note the pompom on the top. Any Canuck worth their salt knows the only good toque is the toque with a fuzzy ball of yarn on the top. It’s like walking around all winter season with a Christmas ornament on our skulls.

This is a Canadian keener in a toque:

Fashion means nothing when one has to brave our arctic like winter temperatures.

Warmth is the preferred currency even if it means looking like a deranged lunatic who stole a cheerleader’s pompom to attach it to their head.

It’s not a beanie or a hat, it’s a freaking TOQUE.

Any questions?

*This public service announcement brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood Canuck hoser. Now excuse me, I need to go make some butter tarts, eat some poutine and wash it all down with some screech.*

*Bob and Doug would be so proud. Sniff.*

You know what is colder than a witch’s tit?

That would be my house.

Not that I know just how cold a witch’s tit is, but my daddy used to always say that after coming in from the frosty winter air while I was growing up.

And judging by how perky and hard this witch’s tits currently are, it’s damn cold out there.

Try shaking that mental image out of your noggin. You are welcome.

It seems I woke up one morning to find myself living in the middle of a freaking ice cube. Literally. Over night the power quit, the furnace motor died, the fire went out in the wood stove and my farcking water line froze.

Welcome to Winter up in Northern Canada y’all. At least I don’t have to worry about the contents in the deep freezer thawing.

*yay for optimism!!!*

If that wasn’t bad enough, my truck wouldn’t start even though I plugged the block heater in. Turns out my battery froze and swelled up like a can of beans with a bad case of botulism.

If cursing can keep a woman warm on a chilly morning, I would have been feverish.

Thankfully, my husband in all his burly glory was home to deal with all the frozen carnage. There is nothing sexier than a man wearing three coats, a pair of winter over alls, a toque  and sporting a fine set of snotsicles. It gets me hot just thinking about it.

How cold is it? Two nights ago it sank to the frosty depths of -59 with windchill. For my metrically challenged American friends Imperial bastards that is -74 freaking degrees.

I’m used to chilly temperatures during our long winter months but there has to be a limit to how far the thermometer can push me before I go stark raving mad. I think I’m there.

When the radio station announced that I lived in the second coldest place on the entire planet, I cackled like a school girl watching her nemesis get pantsed.

I mean, when the only place colder than where you live is freaking SIBERIA, it may be time to consider moving to a warmer location. Or, in my case, go shopping.

What???

Unless you have ever been house bound with three children bouncing off the walls from boredom in deathly cold temperatures, you can’t judge me. I’d rather face the very likely possibility of freezing to death in a parking lot than be forced to watch one more episode of Wizards of Waverly Place.

Shopping turned out to be all right. For just days before the greatest consumer Christian holiday event of the season, the stores were surprisingly empty.

I surmise it’s because normal peoples’ brains weren’t permanently addled by the frost.

Pffth. Whatever. I scored a pair of nose hair trimmers for less than six bucks and found a pair of fur trimmed panties so it was a total win. Even if I lost part of my left ear lobe to frost bite and had to have my truck jump started three times in one day by an assortment of questionable men who thought “Can you give me a boost?” was code for “Why yes, I want to play with your trouser snake.”

Unfortunately, I returned home to find out the school buses will not be running anytime soon due to extreme temperatures which means more freaking Disney Channel marathons. I’d toss the badgers outside but I’m pretty sure there are laws about exposing children to temperatures that can literally freeze their noses off in under a minute.

Damn.

It’s not just humans that are suffering out here either. My dogs aren’t so happy about it either. Although that may be because I keep laughing at them whenever I stuff them into the stupid little doggy parkas they need to wear because they are basically rats disguised as family pets and don’t have enough fur to keep them warm.

Our cats don’t have it so easy. My husband insists they are outside cats no matter what the temperature is. I insist he is an asshole. The truth is somewhere in the middle. After losing the battle and worrying about them all night long when the temps dipped down to -59 I put my big girl panties on and waged war against my feline hating husband..

I won. The cats were allowed in for the night. I knew he’d back down when I threatened to rip his testicles off and throw them in the snowbank. For some reason he has an unnatural attachment to them.

The problem was, where the hell were the cats? They weren’t coming when we called for them and I had visions of frozen cats littering my driveway. Nothing says ‘Welcome and Merry Christmas!’ like dead animals decorating our lawn.

So I did what any momma insane chick who’s husband refused to help would do. I bundled up like the abominable snowman and set out as the one woman search party I was.

Let me tell you, it gave a whole new meaning to pussy popsicle.

The cats were fine; cold but safe and are now currently residing in different branches of my Christmas tree and pooping in my husband’s shoes.

I can’t tell you how this has helped elevate the festive spirits around here. Snicker.

But the worst part of all this? Beyond frozen pipes, dead vehicles, dogs who keep crapping right in front of the door because it’s too cold to venture more than 12 inches from the house, cats who are meticulously destroying one precious Christmas ornament at a time, children who are slowly torturing me to death with their whines of boredom and the sounds of Hannah Montana which now haunt me in my sleep?

I freaking shaved my legs right before Jack Frost’s terrorist attack and now, all my body temperature is escaping through my legs.

I can’t keep warm.

It’s like I’m being punished for grooming.

Lesson learned. The Yeti will return and hopefully so will warmer temperatures.

(Although it may get chilly in the bedroom since my husband has some weird rule about not wanting to engage in marital obligations with a chick who has more body fur than he does.)

Right now though, I’m willing to risk it.

Now excuse me, I need to go put a toque on.

My child recently had to write an essay about the hardest thing he ever had to do. For him, it seems to be trying to keep his damn room clean. It’s mission impossible for a twelve year old sloth I tell you.

But this essay inspired a conversation between us that I have long since been thinking about. He asked me what the hardest thing I ever had to do was.

I didn’t know how to answer him.

What does hard really mean? Gestating and giving birth to three rabid badgers who tore my insides out was hard.

Coming home with a disabled baby no one expected or prepared for was hard.

Trying to explain to people why my beautiful son never smiled was hard.

Spending endless nights, months on end, staring at a boy in a crib in a hospital and wondering if my family would ever be whole and under one roof together was hard. Dealing with one doctor after another in a never ending series of medical emergencies was hard.

Missing field trips and precious moments with my older two children because I had to be with their younger sibling was hard.

Driving alone, in the middle of the night, with a dying child in the back seat of my car was hard.

Looking into my husband’s eyes when he arrived at the hospital and having to find the words to tell him I failed him and our son, was hard. Phoning our family to tell them our boy had died, was hard.

Walking out of the emergency room with nothing but a plastic bag of a dead boy’s belongings was hard.

Mustering up the courage to walk into my childrens rooms, sit them down as their father stood behind me weeping, to tell them their brother died in the middle of the night and they would never have another opportunity to hug him was hard.

Seeing the mound of dirt heaped upon where my boy’s body lie and having to walk away from that boy for the last time, was hard.

Hard doesn’t seem adequate enough.

Facing every holiday and birthday and anniversary knowing my family is forever fractured, is hard.

Watching our friends and family’s be able to celebrate together as a family with all of their children, is hard.

Opening the box of Christmas decorations and hanging a stocking for a boy who only exists in dusty picture frames and our hearts is hard.

None of this gets any easier. It seems to get harder as time ticks past and stretches out in front of us.

How does I choose what was the hardest when all of it is equally devastating and soul shattering?

Trying to adopt a baby boy, only to lose him and be accused of being a bad parent was hard. Fighting to clear our names and bring home another boy, our Jumby, was hard.

Fighting to get our family’s to accept and love Jumby has been hard.

Keeping my marriage together in the face of all this adversity has been hard.

All of these thoughts swirled around me as my son looked at me with patient innocent eyes. It was then I realized what the meaning of hard was to me, what my answer is, what it will always be.

“The hardest thing I have ever had to do, will ever have to do, is to remember to live, Frac,” I answered thoughtfully. “The hardest thing in the world is to choose joy. To remind myself that the scars we bear on our souls are just reminders of what we have been through, what we have lost. They shape us into the people we are today but they shouldn’t determine what comes tomorrow, Frac. For me, setting the example for you and your siblings that no matter how hard life gets, it should always go on because where one joy disappears another will appear.”

Frac fell silent while he stared at his lost brother’s ornament glinting off the Christmas tree as he processed what I had just said. I sat quietly beside him, staring off into the ether of my own memories as I waited for him to respond.

“I wish life wasn’t so hard for us. I wish we could just be regular people.”

“Me too buddy. Me too.”

“Thanks Mom,” he looked at me, the twinkle of the lights on the tree reflecting off his glasses. “I love you.”

“I love you too kidlet,” I smiled as I ruffled his unruly hair.

“I was totally wrong, by the way.”

“Wrong?” I asked, confused.

“Ya, I told Fric that you’d probably say the hardest thing you have ever done was get your nipples pierced. Boy was I wayyy off base,” he snickered.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him, so I just bit my tongue as he walked away and thought to myself, “Nope, dying the muff bright blue all by myself was waaaay harder than stringing ornaments through my boobs.”

Sometimes staying quiet is the hardest thing to do.