Sunday, December 6, 2009

I really have to laugh when people describe snow as magical

Let me tell you about my Saturday night.

After we got about 8 inches of snow on Friday (yes, that's right. We had nothing. Then, in one measly day, we got that much. It's insane outside), Idle Husband and I decided to just relax at home instead of trying to brave the snowdrifts with his car just to look around the Future Shop for nothing in particular. So besides shovelling off our walkway and our driveway (a bit), we had a great movie/computer/game day.

Then, around 6, Idle Husband got hungry. We'd been eating cookies all day and just sitting around, so really I wasn't that hungry. I offered him some of the leftover lemon chicken from Friday's dinner. Nope. I offered to make him a pizza with the frozen dough I'd made Friday (I'm experimenting with pizza dough right now to see if I can get the same results if it's cooked directly from frozen or if I have to unthaw it first). Nope. He didn't want me to cook, saying that I deserved a day off from kitchen work, too. So he said he was just going to run over to the Safeway and get something there. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't budge. It's not that bad! My car can make it! Sigh. I decided to tag along, and good thing I did.

We weren't barely out of the driveway when we got stuck in the snow just off the street. Since I can't really drive a stick shift -- well, I CAN but my problem is starting and stopping and that's kinda the important thing to know how to do well when trying to get free from a snowdrift -- I got out to push. Now that I think about it, I don't really have the power to push a whole car out of the snow, but when you're desperate you don't really think about these things. So I'm pushing and instructing him on what to do, when these two, 18ish aged boys came over to help us. Thank goodness they did because the extra muscle helped to get us out.

We got to Safeway, picked out our dinner, and came home. Just as we were headed into the driveway, we got stuck again. Pretty much in the exact same place. We were really counting on having momentum going in, but it didn't seem to matter in snow that deep. So there was our car, sticking perpendicular out into the road, facing our driveway. We couldn't even pretend like we were parked on the street. After a while of rocking back and forth (going forward a bit, then in reverse a bit), amazingly Idle Husband got it free and parked it across the street. Then we both grabbed a shovel and began shovelling out the snow on the street in front of our driveway. I don't think I can adequately describe to you how much work shovelling 8 inches of snow is. Unless you've experienced it, you probably can't imagine it. Snow isn't the fluffy, light, and serene stuff it's made out to be sometimes. Especially when it all settles on the ground together. It's so heavy and dense that it's impossible to pick it up in one shovel-ful. I had to keep skimming the top off of the drift I was working on until I had dug my way down to the ground.

What an adventure we had! I hope the hamburger was worth it! (Idle Husband insists that it was)

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