Shovel This!

In November my sister went to Arizona.

Her husband scored a sweet contract gig that would carry him through the colder months of Canadian winter, and they liked the idea of a paid vacation, so she went. Just before taking off, she asked my son if he'd look after shovelling their walks and driveway to make the house look "lived-in" for the winter, and of course he said "yes." She even offered him what we thought at the time was an unnecessary financial incentive, which thrilled him more as he's saving to buy a laptop.

Then she flew south.

Both my wife and I were concerned that she was overpaying our young guy, considering the four times we shovelled our own drive last winter, but a deal is a deal.

Then winter happened.

Though many respected meteorologists and climatologists have explained their theories of what's affecting our winter here in Kingston, none have made a lick of sense to me. It started snowing one day in November...and never stopped! Our driveway has narrowed to a fraction of it's size; my sister's walk is exactly one-shovel wide now, with little hope of widening soon thanks to ice accumulation, and the snowbanks are so high at the end of our driveways, that we're considering a traffic-control tower so we can safely egress into the street. Even the paper delivery people have had to quit tromping across the lawns between houses in our neighborhoods, as I believe some of them were lost in the deep snow (I shudder to think of what horrors will be revealed to us come the spring thaw).

I called my sister in Arizona to tell her this, but she seemed distracted by the extreme heat, and had to cut the call short.

My son is just one person. The dumps of snow, ice pellets and just plain ice are too much for any one, so he's recruited my wife and me to help him perform his duty. He barely has the energy left to clear the snow from our drive and walkway, let alone deliver his papers, do his schoolwork and play Wii! But now, even my wife and I are losing it. Her back is aching, and my arms have gone to jelly. It's so bad that I can barely last an entire swim workout...actually, I was never all that good at swimming, so I guess this is just a really good excuse for not improving this off-season.

People all over our city are fed up. They've booked last-minute vacations; flocked to shopping malls and perhaps even tried drinking their way back to being able to deny this cruel season the pleasure of imprisoning us in it's icy grasp!

Every fall, I start gearing up. Literally. I get all my winter running/biking/existing clothing together; buy what I need to add a little more comfort to the dark days, and begin to prepare mentally for the lack of sunlight, the snow, the cold and the rest of what winter brings. It's usually pretty easy to predict what's coming.

If I do all these things correctly, I can usually make it to March Break with a sense of hope for the warm days ahead.

Unfortunately, to quote our city's snow-removal managers: "I just didn't budget for this!"

I wonder what they're talking about today in Arizona.