The Winter of My Discontent

When we moved up here a couple of years ago I was excited at the prospect of enjoying a more pronounced seasonal change; summers would be a bit shorter, fall and spring a bit longer and winter would provide more snow than we were accustomed to in Virginia Beach.  Our first winter here I hastily purchased a snow-blower to move these large quantities of snow from our sixty foot drive.  Sadly, it sat unused the first winter and only once the second.  The rest of the year it sat in the back of the garage taking up floor space and I felt like a dope for having bought the thing in the first place.  For the past few winters, our shovels have been all we’ve needed to clear things up until the sun could do the rest.

This winter has been very different from our first two.  In fact, the children here in Greene County have had so many days off from school due to snowy and icy roads that they won’t even have to make them all up.  If there is one thing I am thankful for this year is that I don’t have one of those little people around my house to keep entertained day after day of confinement.  Sometimes it’s challenging enough just having Dave working from home!  Most of the storms we’ve had haven’t really provided so much precipitation as just plain frigid temperatures, keeping what little ice there is intact on the country roads.  Last night was different.

For the past week we’ve been warned that a big storm was coming with expected accumulations of between ten and sixteen inches of snow.  Yeah right!  As of six last night we had just the smallest flurry of flakes in the air.  Our first hint that something was headed our way was when we sat down to watch the Duke/ UNC game and learned it had been postponed because the roads between Durham and Chapel Hill were impassable.  Hmmm.  When I went to bed, there was maybe an inch of snow on the deck.  Not very impressive, but it was still snowing.

When I woke up this morning, I made a bee line to the window to check things out.  Even in the predawn light, it was evident that a major amount of snow had fallen overnight blanketing everything and hiding all evidence of property lines, driveways and the street.  I could just barely make out the tops of the solar lights lining the front walk, a couple of them were even still glowing from under their snowy cover.

Unlike past snowfalls, I didn’t run for my camera.  I’m really sort of over the whole “isn’t it beautiful?” thing.  Yes it’s pretty but it is also cold, wet and heavy and a great deal of it needed to be removed from my driveway.  At this point I’m just too over it all to wax poetically, reminiscing about snow angels and tobogganing.  I just want it to go away for a long while.

So after finishing my second cup of coffee I geared up and went out to the garage to begin the job of snow removal.  As the door went up I knew my job was going to be tough because there the snow had blown against the door leaving a wall of about fifteen inches of snow.  It took me a few minutes to remind myself how to start the snow blower; first trying to pull the cord and then finally finding the red “start” button.  I gave it a push, held it for five seconds and I was in business.

It was really difficult at first, the snow was deeper than the blower was high but I eventually figured out a way to make it work and began to work my way up and down the driveway, shooting snow off onto the lawn and feeling rather proud of myself for having made such a wise investment.  About half an hour later Dave joined me (he’d been on a business call earlier) and began shoveling.  After a while we traded tools and in less than an hour we had the drive and walk cleared.

I came inside and sitting on the garage steps struggled to get my tall rubber boots off and noticed how wet my jeans and gloves were.  I began pealing off my layers of wet clothing and felt my hair.  Ooooow.  I looked in the mirror and saw what I looked like, the lenses in my glasses were still darkened from the bright light outside and my hair was wet and tangled.  This was the picture I wanted to take.  In an age of “selfies” I wanted to share the real me today; in the winter of my discontent.