It’s -40° this morning, no need to qualify it with a C or an F, this is the point where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales meet. It is on mornings like this that I begin to understand why bears hibernate. It seems so inviting to go back to bed and sleep until spring.

But I have to pay for heat and electricity so I get up and face the day’s work. As I check the news and read of the winter storms in Ontario, Quebec and many parts of the USA I can’t even feel envious that people in those places have it so much better than we do here in Saskatchewan.

We have a programmable thermostat that turns the temperature down for night and turns it up again at 7 am. On mornings like this it takes hours for the house to warm up to a comfortable temperature.

We are deprived of sunlight, the days are short and we spend most of the day indoors. That produces Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), making us feel like hibernation would be a good idea. So we buy a happy light that produces the right spectrum of light to counter the effects of SAD. Spending a little time in front of that light in the morning does have a beneficial influence.

But I find a half hour bouncing on my rebounder (mini trampoline) does much more. It’s not necessary to jump and get my feet off the mat, just to keep the body in motion. A good walk would do as much, but that’s not going to happen very often in this weather. Using the rebounder gets the blood flowing more freely through the body and brain, warms the body, defogs the brain, and gives me energy to face the responsibilities of the day. I think I’ll go and do that right now.