Tuesday, March 14, 2017
Today I am grateful I don’t have to shovel snow. Sometimes if it’s a little bit of snow, I still go out and do it, but I don’t have to because we now live in a Geezer Land townhouse and pay a fee to have others do it for us. So I let them. Gladly.
Some of the folks in my development micro-manage every flake that’s shoveled, every blade of grass that’s grown and every piece of mulch that’s dumped. Not me. I didn’t move in here to worry about the outside. I’m done with that. Why move to a place like this if you are still going to fret over the height of your lawn or the dime-sized piece of ice on your driveway? Get a life!
I have pulled enough thistle and other weeds that seemed like they were attached to a temple in China to last me a lifetime. I’ve picked enough vegetables to appreciate the Farmers Market. I’ve canned enough stuff to cherish the stocked shelves at the grocery store. I’ve worry-watered enough trees to run a nursery. And I’ve shoveled more snow than God even makes anymore. Trust me, it’s true.
When I was a kid we didn’t have a snow blower. We had us. My sister and me and my dad. Mom never shoveled. Ever. I think it was part of their marriage vows. And we lived in Wisconsin, right on “Lake-Effect-Snow-Michigan”. We didn’t have the global warming winters we now have. We had WINTER. Brutal, bone chilling, back breaking WINTER! Shoveling snow isn’t so bad when the temps are in the 30’s or even 20’s.
Try it at twenty below zero sometime, when the drifts pack the crap as tight as a brick and you have to cut squares the size of your shovel and carry them to the pile on the edge because it’s too big and heavy to throw. It’s like you’re building a blasted igloo.
Your eyeballs seize up and your nose drops off if it’s exposed for even ten seconds. Even at those temps you sweat inside the bundling so when you come in you can’t rip stuff off fast enough because you are hot, but your sweaty, wet clothes make you chilled in seconds if you don’t change into something dry. Good luck hurrying because every zipper. . .on your snow pants, jacket and those godawful rubber boots with the fur at the top. . .is frozen like Elsa’s brain. “The cold never bothered me anyway!” I call bullshit on that one. Someone who lives in California must have written that line!
Your mittens get soggy with the packed on snow chunks that stick to the yarn and crack like icebergs in Antarctica. Brush your hair out of your eyes with one of those mittens and you’d get a self-induced lobotomy.
Complaining doesn’t help. All it does is make you breath harder so the wool scarf tied around your face gets soggy with your own breath and snot and then freezes to your face. Very attractive. Picking frozen tufts of red yarn from my cheeks is not a look I cherish fondly.
I understand that many of you are still required to shovel, plow, or blow the snow away with big, noisy machines and I’m sorry for you. Really I am. And I’m glad I don’t have to do it anymore! If I never shovel snow again it will be okay with me.
Well you put your time in as a kid, so I think you have a permanent snow-removal dispensation! Yikes, I thought PA winters were tough as a kid, not even a contest, Mary, you win!
I hired my landscaper this year Mary. Unfortunately, I fell through the snow cracks and they didn’t come until yesterday which meant it was ice which meant they had to bring in a big-time plow to dig me out. I should have just shoveled. But I felt badly because he felt badly and so he is still okay with me. Such drama.