Spring does something crazy to Ottawa folks. Everyone is suddenly overwrought with joy, exponentially so because our winters can be such a slog. Homeowners happily wield rakes and everything gets a good scrubbing, garden centres sprout overnight, restaurant patios come out of nowhere, and everywhere you turn there are bright pasty-legged people wearing t-shirts and shorts. The energy, the happiness, the relief… it’s almost palpable.
They’re calling for lovely weather for the next couple of days and I plan on spending as much time as I can outdoors.
The girls are a little older now but I still worry about fast-moving cars zipping down our residential street.
It seems that almost everyone does about 10km/h over the speed limit, which is 40km/h on residential streets, bringing their speed up to 50km/h… way too fast when there are little people involved. (Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the residential speed limit cut down to 30km/h near parks and schools.)
You know what has worked really well for us? A couple of years ago we came to possess two large neon orange pylons. When the girls are outside we put them on the road, about a metre out from our driveway. Cars see them and slow right down. Sad thing is they’re more likely to slow down when they see the pylons, not when they see kids.
In my pre-child days I used to pooh-pooh those plastic neon kid-shaped things some parents plunked down near where their kids were playing, but now I have to say I totally get it.
