Canada Dry

Sand or snow? The look, and the effect on my skin was the same.


You’ve heard the expression – it’s a dry heat? Up in the frozen North of Canada where we are on assignment, they say ‘it’s a dry cold, eh?’ You betcha, by golly! (practicing my Canadian language skills here, eh).

In winter it can be dry as a desert in this part of central Alberta. Only here instead of hot it’s cold and instead of sand it’s snow. Every inch of my skin is itchy and uber-dry. My colorful and crude West Texas grandmother would call it, ‘Dry as a popcorn fart’. Oh yes, I come from sophisticated stock. For fun that tiny old woman would pick up big hairy scary tarantulas, which are as common as pumper-jacks in West Texas. She’d put the giant spiders in mayonnaise jars for us kids to play with. But that’s another blogpost…

For a shot of a truck in a wilderness scene, Chris insisted on hiking off the side of a remote road. With my short legs, I wasn’t exactly dashing through the snow…

My lips haven’t been this chapped and cracked since my Endless Summer days back in high school. I once spent a week secretly living on the beach with my best friend. She told her parents she was staying with me and I told mine we were staying at her house. Good times. My lip problem back then was due partly to the sun and partly because I stayed more or less continually lip-locked to my over-tanned, under-brained, Beatle-long-haired, surfer-dude boyfriend. We’d smooch for hours, coming up for air only when someone cried “surf’s up!”. Oh, the things we do for puppy love. But that’s another blogpost…

Lip smackin’ (or stickin’) good

I can’t laugh right now because my lips would probably bleed. I’ve sent Chris to the Canadian Tire Store (think frozen Walmart) to buy a pallet of Vasoline Intensive Care Lotion. I plan to fill the hotel bathtub with it and dive in. Maybe Chris will join me, like we did with the giant bubblebath in Melborne. I just hope this time nobody gets hurt or gets their picture in the paper. But that’s another blogpost…