I love snow! I used to sled and build snowmen and forts and have snowball fights. I love the way it piles on the trees and the outdoor furniture and falls gently when the wind blows. My car is parked on the street. Sunday, it snowed. It was that wet, heavy snow great for making Calvin and Hobbs scenes in your front yard. I had to go to church though because I had a lesson afterwards that I had to teach. Sooooo, I shoveled myself out to the car. My hubby had looked out and pronounced the driveway passable as the plow truck had only made 1 swipe. (30 min of shoveling–294 cal) Jumped in my car and backed ALMOST out of the driveway. Yeah, almost. I hit the little bump between the driveway and the street that was caused by the plow’s 1 pass, and the front of the car went sideways (!) even though the wheels were straight. Front wheel drive cars. Now my tail end was sticking out into the street. I shoveled and shoveled and rocked the car back and forth, but I was stuck. I stomped into the house and yelled, “YA, I’M STUCK!” Hubby dressed in his snow shoveling outfit and we shoveled some more, and he pushed and I finally got out of the driveway into the street. Now a Smart person would have pulled the car to the side of the road and not gone to church, but a genius would recognize that the snow was continuing to fall, the plow would be back to bury the car in the street, the garbage truck would come on Monday and slide sideways all the way down the hill and scrape my car, and if I went to church, the plow would have already made its next pass by the time I got back and I would be safe to park on the street if I needed to, so I went ahead and drove the 30 miles to church. I was late, but I made it. Travel on the interstate was about 45mph. I arrived and there were about 10 families there. It was a good service, but they cancelled Sunday School. Our organist played Jingle Bells for the postlude. The lessons I was supposed to teach didn’t show up for church and texted me saying they were taking a snow day. I got home early and parked on the street since the plow had made its 2nd pass (patted self on back, see above prediction). After that earlier activity, the pile in front of the driveway was even bigger, and the stuff I’d shoveled had filled in. Neither my husband or I were ambitious enough to re-shovel and we just collapsed into the super bowl coma. Our son came home and told a similar story about having to dig out his friend’s car and we all sat and moaned about our sore shoveling muscles. We decided that it was too bad out to go to our training session at the gym and we’d already moved a 2k car and shoveled 30 min.
Monday, hubby stayed home, and he finished making a path to the street! 🙂 The garbage truck did not come.
Tuesday hubby shoveled the ICE (yes it melted and refroze!) off his car and went to work.
Wednesday it snowed again. PANIC! Sooooo I shoveled again to get my car off the street (294 cal). It wasn’t the heavy snow as before…nice fine powder. I was parked on the downside of my driveway, and front wheel drive cars DO NOT back up hill on slick roads. I drove around the block (and stopped at a Panera for a roll on the way…well it was about 2 miles out of my way) so that I could come to the driveway from the uphill side. I carefully lined up the car so it would be perpendicular to the driveway, and slowly inched my way into it. You know that ridge of snow that collects between cars? It was now a little ice bump. My front tires hit that ice bump and immediately drove sideways into the yard! So I slowly backed out and tried again. Same result. (Remember the insanity rule?) Backed out again, got out the shovel and tried in vain to remove the ice bump. Then I came to the marketing conclusion! If you sell snow blowers and shovels, and people buy the shovel, make sure it 1) is made of plastic and cannot stand up to heavy snow–it cracks 2) does not have a metal edge so it cannot break through ice or deep snow and just slides along the top 3) if it does have a metal edge, it is riveted into the plastic blade and pops the rivets when the idiot tries to use it to break up large blocks of ice 4) if it does have a metal edge and the rivets don’t pop, make sure the handle is of sufficiently malleable material that if the large blocks of snow or ice are actually movable, the handle bends. THIS WAY YOU SELL MORE SNOWBLOWERS! I was stuck with the rear end of my car in the street. Once again, went inside and yelled, “Ya, I’m Stuck!!!” Son painfully got dressed, and he and I went into the garage to do a Big Bang solution to a large car neither one of us could effectively push out of a snowbank. There were 2 planks of particle board! There was a bucket of Ice Melt! We put the planks directly under the front tires OVER the ice bump and attempted to drive over them. TADA!!!! The car shot one of the planks behind the car, and luckily no one was walking or driving there! Son was cracking up. But NOW I was over the ice bump! We shoveled some more and applied some ice melt, but even with our particle board planks could not get the car further in. What was important was the back end was off the street. Later that afternoon, when the ice melt had worked, and the sun had come out, I went out and shoveled the melted chunks down to the surface of the driveway (294 cal). I was then able to drive the car into its rightful place.
Conclusion, it took me 45 min to get to church 30 miles away on Sunday, and 4 days to get my car from the street to my parking spot in the driveway.
Measureable progress 