- Joined
- Apr 12, 2005
- Messages
- 18,984
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- Location
- At some altitude
- Website
- www.jamie-mason.com
Sometimes random acts of kindness are a pain in the ass.
Let me start out by saying that I like shoveling snow. I don't know why, but there are a few ox-simple tasks that I find soothing: digging holes, slinging mulch, and shoveling snow among them. I think maybe Godzilla lives in my wrists and this is how I let him out of his pen every now and again.
So today I set myself the task of clearing out ten inches of ice-topped snow from our driveway before it petrifies to something that will keep us housebound until April. I had gotten about two-thirds of the job done, when a neighbor from up the mountain (I think his name is John Deere, and he's fussy. He has all his clothes, and even his tractor, personalized!) drives by, plowing the streets for us, because it could be sometime before the county professionals get here. He waves to me and something in his father-friendly smile gives me a sinking feeling.
Sure enough, on the way back, he pulls into my driveway and 'helps' me by finishing the rest of the shoveling with his toothy, clattering, maybe-even-homemade scoop and plow. In the process he also destroyed the asphalt, wrecked the sledding run I was trying to preserve, and tamped down all that his non-precision couldn't manage into a sheet of ice so fine and compact that my bicep and shoulder muscles and heavy-gauge plastic Home Depot special are powerless against it. The grade of our driveway has made it so that his heroics will keep us housebound anyway.
Plus I was playing OCD and counting shovel strokes. I wanted to see how much one hundred shovelfuls cleared from what I had left to do. I made it to sixty-eight.
Goddammit.
Let me start out by saying that I like shoveling snow. I don't know why, but there are a few ox-simple tasks that I find soothing: digging holes, slinging mulch, and shoveling snow among them. I think maybe Godzilla lives in my wrists and this is how I let him out of his pen every now and again.
So today I set myself the task of clearing out ten inches of ice-topped snow from our driveway before it petrifies to something that will keep us housebound until April. I had gotten about two-thirds of the job done, when a neighbor from up the mountain (I think his name is John Deere, and he's fussy. He has all his clothes, and even his tractor, personalized!) drives by, plowing the streets for us, because it could be sometime before the county professionals get here. He waves to me and something in his father-friendly smile gives me a sinking feeling.
Sure enough, on the way back, he pulls into my driveway and 'helps' me by finishing the rest of the shoveling with his toothy, clattering, maybe-even-homemade scoop and plow. In the process he also destroyed the asphalt, wrecked the sledding run I was trying to preserve, and tamped down all that his non-precision couldn't manage into a sheet of ice so fine and compact that my bicep and shoulder muscles and heavy-gauge plastic Home Depot special are powerless against it. The grade of our driveway has made it so that his heroics will keep us housebound anyway.
Plus I was playing OCD and counting shovel strokes. I wanted to see how much one hundred shovelfuls cleared from what I had left to do. I made it to sixty-eight.
Goddammit.
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