Might I introduce you to our new friend: the craftsman 357cc 30" 2 stage snow blower. My husband now prays for snow.
Nice piece of machinery. Would have been helpful at Casa de das this weekend. I love the snow. I'm actually quite the geek about it. It's the whole reason I became a meteorologist <<insert long, self-absorbed story here>>. There is not much finer a circumstance than sitting around the family room with family and friends on Christmas day with a blanket of fresh snow outside and a cozy fire in the fireplace. But
this snowstorm beat the crap out of me. See, Casa de das has been on a 9 month remodel so we can take in larger groups of foster kids. As the project encountered delay after delay, the one abiding plea from my lovely wife has been, "it will all be ok as long as we can have furniture on the 1st floor so we can have Christmas dinner at our house with our friends and family". "No problem" was my naively repeated response.
On the ever-slipping master schedule, this weekend was the weekend to cart our Christmas Dinner-critical belongings from storage to the house. So, I have to ask, what is a better alternative? I had to shovel 65 yards of driveway and another 45 yards to the sea-going container on the street that holds all my worldly possessions with the entire route covered with 21" of snow. Is it better to shovel that length covered with 21" of snow or is it better to shovel 7" of snow x3, spacing out the manual labor? Yeah, I'm disturbed that I now know the answer to that ridiculous question. I’m also displeased that I have learned that if you shovel snow for 4 hours one night then another 5 hours the next morning, it is surprisingly difficult to lift boxes and heavy furniture afterwards. On ice. For 100 yards. Into a house where “you can’t walk with your wet boots, it has to be socks on our newly finished hardwood floors”. Apparently, human muscles need something called a “recovery period” or some such. I also found out that it is nearly impossible to anticipate the correct loading (and inversely unloading) order of a sea going container 9 months prior to the actual unloading. And that any attempt to anticipate the correct order, it is nearly probable that you will be 100% exactly wrong and the dining room table and chairs will be at the far end of the 45’ container and that all that stuff has to be unloaded out on to the street where the plows and salt trucks have just dumped prodigious amounts of brown rock salt to turn the snow they just plowed into a big heap right in front of your driveway into a soupy, slushy brown mush. I’m pretty sure all the happy, jovial neighbors out happily shoveling and being all neighborly with each other and stuff must have been tired from shoveling and being all neighborly and stuff so that’s why they did not come down and offer to help. I don’t think it had anything to do with the massive tourette’s moment I suffered replete with lots of “daddy’s special language” when the salt truck rolled through just after I figured out where the table and chairs actually were in the freezing, dark container piled high full of junk that I was pretty sure at that moment I no longer wanted or needed.
So, for the first time in forever, I stood there shaking my fist at the sky and cursing the snow. I immediately knew I had transgressed. It did not matter that I immediately ran into the woods dug through the snow, gathered then built and burnt a small alter of twigs and leaves in sacrifice to the Snow Gods. They are a vengeful collection of deities. I will get what I deserve. The ice storm now slated for Christmas Eve and the first half of Christmas Day will be especially nice as I sit in my socks in my newly re-furnished family room with my daughter and wife in the dark with no electricity, no warm food, no guests and the ice turning to bleak, cold rain right about when the sparkling cider is supposed to be popping and the turkey is supposed to be hitting the table.
Link to Clarksburg, MD weather forecast so you can watch the calamity unfold in real time:
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=39.23757161784571&lon=-77.26959228515625&site=lwx&smap=1&marine=0&unit=0&lg=enCasa de das, front:
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt343/das_photos/20decfront.jpg?t=1261420738Casa de das, back:
http://i626.photobucket.com/albums/tt343/das_photos/20decback.jpg?t=1261420789A snowy day at Casa de das in happier times:
http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/publicpix/feb2003/feb17.jpg
