The Weather Outside is Frightful

Winter is here...again. The forecast today is calling for 8 - 10 inches of snow. Oh, joy. That means I’ll be wandering out to the garage later in the vain hope there’s still some gas/oil mix sloshing around the bottom of a gas can. I’ll drip the remainder of that mix into the snowblower, taking care to get at least half of it on my gloves. Then, I’ll spend twenty minutes trying for my first heart attack by yanking the pull start rope about seven or eight million times. When I’ve almost pulled my shoulder out of joint, the beast will sputter to life.

For about ten seconds, when it will die, and I get to pull for another five minutes until the shoulder actually does come out of joint. My arm at this point will be flopping about uselessly, held close to my body only because it’s still in the sleeve of my jacket. But the blower will start - grudgingly. Time to blow some snow!

Our snowblower is called a single-stage, which means it can pick up one ounce of snow per second - provided it’s only an inch deep and very powdery - and hurl it up to seven inches. I usually have to do the sidewalk in no less than three passes, unless the snow is wet and heavy (which it usually is), in which case I can take one half-pass. By the end of that pass, the impeller will have picked up enough snow to create a pumpkin-sized ball of ice that it has no chance of ejecting from the chute. Time to shovel some snow!

We have one of those shovels with the curved handle, so designed to mitigate back pain. It must work, because I halved my aspirin expenditure last winter. So I’ll shovel and shovel and shovel some more. The feeling in my toes will go first, then my fingers. And I’ll continue to shovel, finally getting to the end of the driveway. Now I can start on the sidewalks. Yes, plural - it’s a corner lot.  I'll finish in an hour or so, stumbling back to the house, arms numb with cold and fatigue.  I'll probably trip over the dog, too, because my glasses will fog up the instant I walk in the door.

Winter is here. Again.