cimorene

waxjism and I have been meaning to go for more walks ever since we moved here in 2019, and we've talked about it periodically but even more on vacations, because that's when we have the most time to talk about the future and life in general. We've not ever managed what you could call a routine or really a pattern, but we've gotten a lot better this year.

I was musing about this the other day and thinking we should set a more specific goal, and on today's walk we came up with "walking together every day Wax isn't working late and it isn't raining and nobody is sick or anything like that, with a once-a-month get-out-of-walk-free card", with the walk times to be scheduled in advance each time she gets her work schedule.

We both suffer from ADHD and we both have great difficulty initializing in general, and of course, forming or sticking to routines in general, and switching tasks, and all that kind of thing, and we often use doing things together as a crutch because it's the only way either of us can manage to do them. But that also means a little snag only has to distract one of us to derail both of us from doing whatever it is because the other one will just hover there like, "Oh, I guess we're not [going for a walk, making dinner, doing the laundry, etc] after all! Guess I need to start a fanfic or tv show." So nebulous future plans are always extra precarious, but perhaps this scheduling-in-advance idea will counteract the nebulousness.

Two winters ago I bought a pair of the adult version of the snowboots that like 70% of little Finnish kids wear in daycares and gradeschools for when it's extremely cold and snowy. These have great treads and are insulated and they're a bit ugly, but whatever, I think of them like the snow version of rainboots. I can wade through the drifts in these. I'm not saying there aren't any more stylish or traditional boots that you can wade through snowdrifts in - there probably are some nice tall leather boots with equally good grip and insulation and all that, even ones without zippers (which I won't buy in boots now after having them break in a few pairs). But it's harder to find all that in one package, and the only real candidates that are made in Finland cost about 3-5 times as much as these. (My shoes don't HAVE to be made in Finland, but I do like supporting the local and domestic economy in general. I also have a logical predilection for winter shoes designed and produced by companies based in the same sort of climate I'm dealing with. You can, of course, buy Canadian and Norwegian and Swedish winter boots in Finland too, but Finnish ones can be ordered from the manufacturer without paying international shipping, and without hunting through their website trying to figure out if they even ship internationally in the first place.) The obvious choice of winter boots to meet those requirements would be Sámi boots, which are widely available throughout Finland, Sweden, Norway, and probably Russia I presume. The turned-up toes are charming - they're called "beak shoes" in Swedish! - and I recently learned the shape is functional, for keeping skis on, though obviously that's not my concern. I still want some of the colorful felt ones that Töysän kenkätehdas calls Arctips some day, but they cost almost exactly four times a pair of Kuomas. Some day!)

When it was around the -20s C in winter 2020 for several weeks (roughly -4 to -22° F) I became determined to have warm enough winter gear in case that happened again, and I talked myself into it like, "It's just for when it's so cold that it would be silly to worry about anything but being warm enough; you're already going to be wearing a Michelin man's worth of snow clothes and the only part of your face visible between the hood and scarf is typically your eyes, so it won't matter! The rest of the time you have the other boots." But once I actually had the snowboots, the lure of convenience and coziness quickly started outweighing the nicer appearance of Timberlands and Dr Martens more and more often. If I have to walk across sheets of ice I'd still put ice cleats on over leather boots, but if it's just bits of ice in compacted snow these seem to be fine, too. (They do advertise a grippy sole.) After walking with Wax this winter in them it's obvious they have significantly better grip than her vintage 90s Dr Martens (which do have pretty good grip, from my experience, compared to other boots and shoes I've worn on ice - I never would have considered wearing something as ugly and ungainly as ice cleats on my shoes in my 20s). I asked Wax a few weeks ago what it would take for her to want to make the switch to pull-on snowboots too, and she said, "Probably leaving the house often enough for it to be worth it!" So I ordered her a pair today, after watching her slip mildly a few times on the compacted snow on our walk. It was well below freezing, so most of the landscape was dry, crunchy-topped snow, with very little actual ice showing: not at all what I refer to as The Icy Times, which comes only when a freeze follows a good melt. When we got home today the hems of her jeans had turned to ice, because they got soaked with snow and then melted by body heat. It's much easier to tuck your jeans into these than into Docs.