I am Sisyphus
January 14, 2008 4 Comments
I like snow. I like snowstorms. I love watching the flakes fall, watching them pile up on the ground. I even like the drama of a good nor’easter.
I do NOT like shoveling my driveway. I’ll do it once per storm, with ill grace, and lots of dramatic eye-rolling.
So, today.
Woke up this morning to a good six inches of snow on the ground. Not unexpected – we knew a storm was arriving, and I had planned ahead. A good day of working at home stretched ahead of me.
10am. I got a break in the conference calls, so I bundled up to tackle the shoveling. It was a good showing. I brushed off both cars and shoveled one car width of the driveway, including the part at the bottom. There was a good 6-8 inches accumulation the length of the driveway, but where the plows had gone by on the street, there was probably a good 2 foot berm at the foot of my driveway. And it was still snowing. But it was relatively light and powdery. A good workout, and not impossible. I take off my snow-covered sweatshirt in the mudroom and throw it in the dryer.
2:30pm. Shit.
I look out the window and although another 3-6 inches of snow has fallen, that’s NOT what catches my eye. The bastards have plowed me in again. There’s ANOTHER 2 foot embankment at the foot of my driveway. I don the ladybug wellies again, noting in passing that some of the snow from my previous outing has made its way into the boot and MELTED, and now my socks are wet. Lovely. The embankment is a little heavier now … snow mixed with sand and salt from the road. I’m getting sore. This sucks. I shovel out one-car-width, and then make a well-deserved coffee run.
It takes 20 runs to get back into the driveway. Apparently, I didn’t do a very good job shoveling.
5:00pm. F*ckity f*ck f*ck.
They’ve done it again.
Another foot and a half or so of crap at the bottom of my driveway.
Shoving my feet back in the ladybug wellies, I discover at least an inch of water in the bottom of each boot. Sigh. This stuff at the bottom of the driveway now is IMPOSSIBLE to move. Heavy, water and mud-soaked. I get 4 shovelfuls moved and I’m now convinced I’m going to die.
I can’t move my arms anymore.
Bastards.
And as I write this, I hear them out there again.
They’re probably carting it in from Ayer now.
I wonder if I could teach Bodie to shovel?
The guilt is unimaginable….
– Here I am basking in the wonderful weather of Calgary, of all places – dry – mid forties – and I have shirked my duties of driveway clearing – I DO have one tip though – put the boots on the bricks on the steam radiator (as not to melt them – the bricks damper that much of the heat) between sessions, along with gloves and such… two pair work even better along with a pair of shoes to get from the boot drop off point without wetting one’s socksezez… real pisser when that happens… not a wicked one, but just a regular one – never to be confused with wicked pissah which is somehow a good thing in localbostonspeak…..
And, don’t forget, at some point during the day you called the parents, looking for sympathy, only to be told “Gee, we have no snow on the Cape.” Sorry ’bout that.
If you’re Twittering that you’re sore, that must mean it was a workout. Which means you’ve met your goal for working out in 2008. Congratulations!!!!
I’ve always thought that shoveling once for 2 hours is better than shoveling 4 times for 30 minutes each. Then again, I’m just running out the clock until my free labor gets old enough to shovel for me.