The snow this week reminded me of a trip 29 years ago this month that my friend Crissy and I took to the Quebec Winter Festival.  It was an IBM trip, the bus picked us up in Kingston at 5:30 am on a Thursday and we were to return late Sunday night after attending the 30th anniversary of the BonHomme winter holiday.  We arrived in Quebec early afternoon and quickly changed our money, a trick we had learned the hard way in Ireland.  The snow was amazing - up over the first floor windows, piled high in the streets with just narrow little pathways to walk on.  We noticed that the Quebec residents were very thin, a fact Crissy thought was directly related to the narrow paths.  We had been warned upon our arrival of the festival drink called "Caribou" that was especially deadly and especially well liked by the locals.  We quickly bought souvenir plastic red canes with a removal BonHomme head (a snowman wearing a tasseled hat).  The head could be removed so that vendors who were selling the drink, could pour it directly into your cane.  People on the streets everywhere were lifting headless BonHomme canes to their mouth.  We decided to take a tour on a horse driven carriage with a woman driver, who unfortunately did not speak English.  We were amazed to see snow higher than the goal posts in the local school yard, snow everywhere piled high.  I tried to question her: "Quelle mon la beige est away?"  she looked puzzled and then smiled and said, "Oh, Mai" - think of that - snow until May.

We saw an ice castle, a real castle with two floors that you could walk into, and a parade at night, complete with fireworks shot right over the heads of the onlookers.  Ambulances were riding up and down the streets to pick up the people who had failed to heed the caribou warnings and were down in the snow.  Crissy and I walked the street, and hearing music, entered a building where they took our coats, and $10 dollars or the equivalent, and we entered a large gym,  furnished with picnic tables and bands, four of them, in each corner.  Molson's beer was being sold everywhere, and we sat down at a table.  After a few drinks we had the great idea of taking a swim.  The brochure at our hotel had advertised a swimming pool and we had come prepared with our suits.  We put on our suits, grabbed a couple of towels, and got on the elevator.  One of the buttons was labeled pool, so we hit it.  People got on the elevator at the next stop and looked at us in surprise.  The pool button took us to the bottom floor, and we followed the signs for "pool".  Turning a corner, we came to an empty hall, with a door at the end.  There was a window, covered with snow, but we could just make out an outline of the outside pool, completely filled in with snow.  "No wonder they looked at us like we were nuts", we thought laughing and tried to reach our room without anyone seeing two grown women in February wearing bathing suits.  Probably perfectly normal during the festival.

Crissy and I traveled well together, Boston, Venezuela, two trips to Ireland, but that trip to Quebec, the snowiest place in the winter, is right up there near the top of the list.

Let's continue with the theme of Death Month.  A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the living room front window, a large bay window that overlooks the front yard, the birdfeeders, Clay Hill Road, and anyone or anything going on outside my house.  I love to sit in that window, especially when the sun is bright on a cold winter's day, it is almost like being at the beach.  Anyway, I was sitting there, when I got this idea that I would like to be laid out in front of that window, in my own house, with my own things all around me.  No need to make a photo poster, family pictures hang all over the walls.  No cold hard folding seats, there is my wonderful couch of 25 years to relax on.  I shared this idea later that day with Sabra and Laura and they quickly latched on to the idea.  "It would be so nice, so comfortable to be in our own home, for the funeral.  The kids could go outside and run around, you could make a cup of tea in the kitchen, so much better than the coldness of the local funeral home."  At Mayor Koch's funeral on Monday, which I watched with great interest, his assistant remembered that the Mayor had strarted to plan his funeral in the 80's and was constantly updating it.  Can't start too early, better make an appointment with the funeral director to see if he can handle this, I thought.

Then today at Mass, the priest got into "dust to dust" with Ash Wednesday coming up in a few days.  My ears perked up when he mentioned wooden coffins hand made by Trappist Monks as part of their works for God.  Looking the coffins up on the internet, their simplicity, their low price starting at $1,000, sold me.  They even bless the coffins and offer a free Mass for anyone using one.  What a bargain.  I think I am on to something.

The first of February, a month that Bucky termed "death month" years ago because so many people died in February one year.  This first day of this month Mayor Koch died.  I met Mayor Koch several years ago while on an IBM bus trip to the city.  Well, I didn't actually meet him, he spit on me.  We were at a food festival that we just happened upon in one of the parks, very busy atmosphere, everyone enjoying ethic type foods.  A group of men passed by, one eating and spitting all over the place, and Timmy pointed him out as Mayor Koch.  "Yeah," I said as I wiped off my shirt, "he just slopped all over me."  So much for the Mayor.

Timmy has been sick all week, an inner ear ailment maybe, dizziness and nausea on standing so he spent three days laying flat in bed, the only way he felt ok, laying flat. Sabra looked up his ailment on the internet and deemed it an inner ear problem, or a brain tumor, take your pick.  Apparently, there is a new kind of phobia going around, people using the internet to look up their symptoms and coming down and going to their doctors with hypocondriatic illnesses learned on line.  I can see where that might be a problem.  I only used the internet once.  It was years ago and my belly button was inflamed and sore.  Looking up the symptoms I gasped as I read of three different possible cancers, feminine type concerns and intestinal juices being emitted through the naval.  Nervously, I examined myself for more symptoms and saw that it was too tight pants in too hot weather.  Loose pants, and the cancers all went away. 

Timmy uses the nature programs on TV to diagnose his illnesses.  For this one, he used a wolf that had a broken leg and laid in an entrance to a small cave for two weeks, semi protected from coyotes, until his leg healed, and he headed for a stream, drank water and was fine from then on.  So Timmy stayed in bed (his cave), didn't eat for days, and today he is on his feet, his voice still shaky from whatever he had.  Maybe on the nature channel he can learn what to do about that. One day of death month down, twenty seven more to go.