Mad at the snow

I just got back in from clearing the driveway of snow. Again. It's probably (no joke) the 20th time this winter I have done it. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that we'd still have the snow from the first blizzard (December 8th) in February. I think there have been about 5 days of melting, none of which have been serious or have resulted in an significant loss of snow pack.

I really love winter. I am fond of saying that I'll take the coldest, snowiest, windiest day of winter over the hottest, muggiest day of the summer. And it's still true. But I have to say that this winter has really broken me. As Heidi said in her blog post yesterday, the snow is still pretty when it's coming down, but it feels almost malevolent at this point, almost as if it's just another punch in the gut when we're down. I look back to the days right after the first blizzard and we were marveling at how much snow we had. Little did we know that we hadn't seen anything yet. The best description of the winter came from Heidi last night as we were leaving the school carnival - in a word, wearying.

It makes the drama of the purchase of the new snowblower seem quaint - could you imagine how we would have made it through without a dependably starting snowblower? It's more than paid for itself this winter alone. Even if we don't have to use it for another 5 years (doubtful), I still don't regret it.

But here's where I am with the winter at this point - and it's really posing quite a conundrum for me. Yeah, I'm so sick of shoveling and snowblowing, of snow pack in the wheel wells of the car, of dangerous looking icicles and even more dangerous looking ice dams on my roof. But I'm also amazingly sick and tired of people bitching about it. It really is, as Joan said, like being mad at the dirt. It hasn't done us any good - in fact, I think we're all (myself definitely included in that blanket statement) just feeding back on ourselves, creating more drama than is necessary. I know that I get caught in the loop of "what the fuck am I going to do if my roof is trashed?" but seriously, all that does is give me an ulcer. The best we can do at this point is wait till spring and see what happens. No amount of catastrophizing or worrying will change the outcome now.

So from now on, I'm done bitching about winter. Whenever I'm tempted to become irate with the forecast of snow (2 to 4 inches before the weekend's out), I'll just think of this little ditty that I stumbled across on YouTube.

When it rains, it snows

Apparently, after a month of daily posting, I'm reaching for the stars and going for a post every 5 days. But in my defense, I did work a run of 5 overnights and no sooner was that over than we got walloped by the first winter storm of the season which left 13 inches of the white stuff on the ground in less than 24 hours. This is big even for us - folks in the Dakotas and Colorado and Michigan would scoff at this, but it pretty much paralyzed the state. Anna STILL doesn't have school today, probably due more to the fact that the roads are not completely cleared.

It was made even more stressful by the fact that I went out last week to make sure the snowblower worked and it decidedly did not. Motherfuck, it was the last thing I needed. I figured that it was probably a clogged gas line or something, but I tried putting some fresh gas in it anyway and again, nothing. So I left it and decided to mess with it later. When later arrived, I noticed that there was a large puddle that looked suspiciously like gasoline underneath the snowblower. Since we had surpassed my abilities in dealing with it, it looked like I was going to have to take it in and have it serviced. Of course, with the "storm of the century" (as the local news was calling it despite the fact that there are still 90 years left in this century) bearing down on us, every place was swamped with repair requests.

When I was out there dropping it off, the guy showed me how the blade was damaged from years of use and how it was probably reaching the end of its life. I told him to try to get it running anyway, thinking that I'd limp by another season on this on and then save next year for a new one, because if there was any one thing I couldn't do, it was plunk down the cash for a new snowblower.

Well, the universe usually conspires to teach you a lesson, even (and especially) when you close your ears to it and the next day we woke up to snow coming down and rapidly deteriorating roads. I called out to the repair place and they said they'd probably have it done by 3pm, which was fine, but Heidi and I decided to stop out there after dropping Anna off at school. We talked to the guy and he proceeded to explain to us how we were looking at a couple hundred bucks worth of repairs AT LEAST. At that point, it was becoming clear to us that fixing it would ultimately result in throwing good money after bad so we made the decision right then and there to buy a new one.

It killed me to spend the money, but what are you going to do when they're talking about 10-14" of snow and you have a 100 foot long drive to clear?

In the end, we bought a mid-range Toro and even that cost a small fortune. However, it cleared the snow quite admirably over the last couple of days. It also started right up each time I tried it (electric start - I was not compromising on that) and here's hoping that it lasts until Anna's graduated from college.

If I had known that I was going to be buying a snowblower, I never would have replaced our TV the day after Thanksgiving. But you win some and you lose some. In the ultimate example of the law of averages, working all those overnights will end up just about paying for the snowblower (I worked a crapload of overtime covering those shifts). Easy come, easy go. I was hoping to buy something a little more sexy with all that extra cash, but I'll settle for functional.

Let it snow

Actually, despite my previous post professing to love the snow and winter (which I still do), at this point, let's not and say we did.

Last winter we were stuck in an incredibly snowy pattern. I don't know how much snow we got last winter, but it doesn't seem like I fired up the snowblower even half as much as I have this year. It snowed again today. The snowstorm delivered much less than it promised, but it is of the light Canadian variety which will cause great travel problems long after it stops falling.

I cleared the driveway for the what feels like hundredth time this winter today before going to pick Anna up from school, which got out at 1:30 today. As a friend of mine said this morning, Alice Cooper singing "School's...out...at 1:30" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

For those of you who live where there is no snow - whether you usually get snow and haven't gotten any this year or you never get snow - I snapped some pictures of what I'm up against right now. (click photo to enlarge)

A look down our street. That sidewalk in the foreground is ours.

The entrance to the driveway - what I have been able to carve out. By far the worst part to snowblow because it contains all the snow from the street that the plow pushes out of the street.

The side of the house down the driveway. That door was recently openable as I lugged all the Christmas stuff to the basement through that door. As it stands now, we won't be using that until the spring.

The path that I have dug through the back deck to make it easier to get to the garage.

One of the most crucial snow removal places - the turn from the main driveway to the long approach to the street. Heaping mounds of the white stuff mostly thanks to the snowblower, but still.

Anna's swing set (and mine from my youth and my mom's from hers) slowly being consumed by snow. Pretty soon we won't see the glider.

We're not to the point where you have to start shoveling the roof, but I'm starting to wonder when that will happen.

What we need is a SERIOUS melt before we get anymore. But that's not likely to happen as there's a 60% chance of snow tomorrow.

And once it does melt, I have no idea where it will go. Actually, I do. Skunk River and Squaw Creek, which will probably result in a repeat of this.

Happy snow everyone!! I still like it, but everything in moderation.