If her circle of friends has dwindled and the family network has all but died, I hope you can get her interested and active in a temperate new location. It can be very difficult for elderly people to start afresh in new places because it is through the force of habit and repetition that memory is built, and if you disrupt their memories, they can become quite disoriented and depressed. So the move would have to be to a community which has things she would be interested in and invigorated by, where she happily sets up new good memories. Fortunately, women tend to be better at this than men.

Winter ... Oh, god. It's pretty bleak alright, although our January was quite mild and wonderful. Right now, it's in the -20ºCs, but it's supposed to warm up on Wednesday, which is when I have to end the e-commute and manage the real commute. I am not looking forward to the spring, when all this snow melts. If we have a wet spring, then we will be in for another round of overland flooding. If that happens, then the government will not bail out flood victims again. They will lose their homes and the inner city valleys will be converted to parkland, which means we will lose our most beautiful and liveable communities. I don't know what the city will do about the downtown core, though. Probably insist that any highrises move their plants to a floor above the flood level.