Won’t It Stop Snowing?

This weekend – and I do mean the whole 48 hours – we’ve had what some people here in Quebec call ‘pleige’ (closest English pronunciation would be ‘pledge’ without the ‘d’. Closest English translation would be ‘snain’). This snow/rain hybrid is a plague. It’s heavier than snow and since it’s half-melted, it’s as wet as shoveling rain. And you have to get it off your porch/stairs before it freezes or else there are broken bones in your future.
But that’s not even the most annoying thing about pleige.
Because it is so dense, pleige clogs all the street drains, causing puddles of salt, rubber and road dirt flavored Slurpee to populate every sidewalk and street. It sludges over your ankle when you walk in it – which means, thanks to your pants’ capillarity, that you’re wet up to your knees – and it takes flight when a car drives through it.
As if it weren’t hellish enough, one Slurpee puddle out of three covers an actual – and sneaky – layer of ice which may cause you to take a plunge.

Today, we had something different; an actual snowstorm. On top of every now frozen solid puddle of Slurpee now lays a foot high snowbank. I kid you not. The sidewalk and the streets are relatively snow-free (as in ‘there’s barely three inches of snow’) but every time you want to cross the street, you have to step through a snowbank. Some of them actually go up to my knee, which is arguably not all that high compared to other people but still.
The funny thing is that this is my fourth Monday at Frima Studio (which kind of translates to “Rime” Studio) and the third on which I have to brave a similarly violent snowstorm to get to work.
Maybe it’s not that funny (except for Mother Nature).

And now I’ve got a cold.

That, dear readers, is March in Quebec City!

The reason I’m telling you all this is that it’s easier to rant than write a worthy drabble through the pulsing discomfort of my sinuses.
I’m afraid my reading of your ‘Memory‘ drabbles will have to wait and so will my own take on the challenge. 😉