A Shoveling Saga

We had a huge thaw a couple weeks ago that reduced most of the snow piles to dingy gray shadows of their former mountainous selves and even revealed some grass - and a good bit of mud. As the snowpack in my yard diminished, some unexpected treasures appeared: a baseball bat, a badminton racket, a stripy rubber ball, a plastic frog. But that's all history, because over the past several days we got socked with another significant winter storm.

After Thursday's and Friday's driveway shovelings, the banks were again over my head. Sunday morning, after it had snowed nonstop all Saturday, the driveway-clearing task looked pretty monumental from my window vantage point. I bundled up, headed out, and found that it looked even worse. The plow had hurled a small mountain of hard-packed rubble that filled the first six feet or more of the driveway. The rest was fluffy new snow, but there was close to a foot of the stuff. Daunted, I retreated to the backyard for a little frisbee with Maisie while I geared up.

Then I got out the purple plastic sled and got to work. In addition to the scooping shovel and the chopping shovel, the sled is a key piece of equipment. Here's how it goes: First I chip out the icy plowstuff with the chopping shovel. Then I use the scooping shovel to toss the chunks up onto the towering driveway banks until they stop sticking and start cascading back down. Then I start heaping snow onto the sled and hauling load after load up the driveway to empty it in a steadily growing pile near the house.

I invited Maisie to make herself useful by pulling the sled for me, but she declined. Instead, she got busy removing the stick arms from my snowperson and chewing them to bits. Then she snatched the stick out of the snowdog's mouth and devoured that, too.

As I trudged up the driveway for the fourteenth time, I decided that what I really need is an enthusiastic eight-year-old who would enjoy hauling away the sled-loads as fast as I could fill them. It would be great fun. It would go much faster. And we could use our finished pile to build a snowfort. So, anybody have a spare eight-year-old? I promise to return your child for parent-teacher conferences and dentist appointments, but I'll be glad to borrow him or her whenever there's another blizzard in the forecast. We can roast marshmallows in my fireplace, read stories as the snow falls, and then head out for yet another round of glorious shoveling. Do let me know - I suspect there's more snow to come before spring arrives!