Donna was meant to arrive in Toronto on Thursday afternoon. That gave me time to go to the chiropractor in the morning, pick up a reserved book from the library, and go to the gym before heading to the airport to meet her. While I got to do everything I wanted to do, the snow kept many flights from landing at Toronto.

I looked at the flight schedule on the Toronto Pearson website at about 11am and saw the Donna’s flight from Washington DC had been cancelled, as had many many others. Basically, there were only three types of flights on the Toronto airport website on Thursday: early, delayed or cancelled.

I messaged Donna, who was sightseeing in Arlington Cemetery, and told her about the flight. She checked her email and saw that she’d been rebooked on a flight through Philadelphia for later in the day. Phew!

So I went and did my errands. The snow was really bad. A lot of the streets weren’t plowed so traffic crawled along. The sidewalks were piled high with the white stuff, which soon turned grey. It took a long time to get anywhere because it was akin to wading through water.

After my errands and my trip to the gym, I got word from Donna that her flight had been cancelled again. She was being put up in a hotel and rebooked for a flight the next afternoon. She didn’t get to see much of Philadelphia as the hotel was in Chester in an area deemed too dangerous by the staff to even walk outside.

So Donna was a no-show for Thursday. It was Dad’s 70th birthday in Perth by that stage so we called him independently of each other (not exactly the birthday message that would have been nice if we’d called together but the weather gods had other plans). He liked the gift basket we’d organised for him, and it was delivered on his birthday, so at least something arrived when it was supposed to.