I Enjoy a Good Crisis

What is it about a crisis, bad news, bad weather, car crashes, natural disasters and the like?
The elderly are riveted!

Perhaps it is living to a ripe old age, sidestepping any number of maladies and mishaps (not to mention facing up to one's mortality in the face of friends and family losing theirs) that makes my mother sit up and take notice (and continue taking notice) watching the same images on TV for hours on end.

This morning we were to take a drive to our new town, our new house. We wanted to show her the house, her spaces, talk about setting up the kitchen, show her the back yard where we'll be enjoying coffee on warm spring mornings in the near future. Alas, our missing winter arrived today so the conditions were not ideal--we'd be happy to go, we're equipped, we have our snow tires, but my mother would be bracing herself in the front seat the entire journey awaiting the inevitable wipeout. We'll go next week, it will be easier for all of us!

So, we are not leaving the city, yet, we have to turn on The Weather Channel every 20 minutes or so to check the road report and talk about how grim it is. We look outside and see snow blowing around and talk about how grim it is. For days now we've been tsk tsking about the snow in Japan, lo and behold in our coverage of local snow there's Japan again so we can tsk tsk yet again.
We do live in a snowbelt here, it's snowing and it's a bit windy but it's hardly a storm yet we are watching the coverage like it's the storm of the century. I think there be greater joy it if was the storm of the century, we could REALLY get into it  :)

Weather, to be fair most Canadians seem transfixed, is a biggie. We've also covered car crashes, local politics, salaries of the rich and not famous (more politicians, heads of hospitals, our banks...), Native Canadians (I try to steer clear of this one not even delicately anymore, I will take advantage of my mother's wandering mind some days so I don't have to hear those comments that just make you wince).

I think we've covered virtually all bad things except environmental catastrophe.
It's 1:05pm, there's plenty of time and news channels to find that one.

Off I go, risking life and limb, 'out in the weather' as my best friend and I say. I'm going to the gym which is ten minutes away, I'll leave the TV on for my mother so she can watch the local accident report. Yes she will do this (true, in a way it is sweet...little nutty but sweet).