Choices

Drifts to the bottom of the windows

A week ago today the snow was still whipping drifts that erased sidewalks and decks, brilliantly and beautifully dressed trees and shrubs while rendering movement on streets and sidewalks close to impossible. 
Virtually the entire city chose to come to a screeching hault with 1/3 of the buses stranded throughout the Twin Cities. Malls, shops, civic, theater, colleges and events forced to close or cancel.  It was beautiful and it was dangerous.

The sun rose this morning in crystal clear skies revealing that the street in front of my house is once again clear of ice and snow.  The snow "rocks" tossed on the boulevard by the city snow plows are still there though!  I keep waiting for it to warm up - you know to like windchill of 10 degrees above zero - so I can go out and begin to chop my way through to the street.  I know me well enough to know I would happily leave it alone until spring but the reality is that it is still fall and spring is four very long snowy cold months away. 

The hardest choice I made last week was to cancel going to my grandson's elementary Christmas Choir Concert.  I just couldn't get myself to go outside in sub-zero weather on streets/highways still laced with ice/black ice and drive the 70 miles around trip alone.  It was the first time I missed one of my "grands" concerts.  I felt is was a wise but hard choice.

In the week since "fall blizzard" two friends have sustained serious injury, both breaking their pelvis in very different circumstances.  One was going to a Christmas lunch with colleagues when three of them fell on the icy sidewalk.  Two got right up and the third was hospitalized with a broken pelvis.  The second was going out for a Friday Night Fish Fry with four other friends when their car slid off a rural road.  She called her son to come with the tractor to pull them out.  He chose instead to take his SUV to get everyone out of the vehicle and into a warm house before pulling the car out with his tractor.  Her friends all got out of the car with ease but she had trouble bearing weight.  Once at the emergency room it was determined that she too had a broken pelvis and will be hospitalized until Christmas with a six week recovery period once she is released. We make conscious choices hundreds of times a day.  No matter how careful we are, accidents simply happen some causing painful injuries. 

I have chosen all week to ignore the four foot high barrier between the sidewalk in front of my home and the street.  My choice was born in sub-zero windchills and the fact that the city had not yet been able to clear the street to the curb. The bright and warm sun this morning has me almost convinced that I can ditch denial and remove that monstrous barrier that prevents me from parking in front of my house and guests as well as emergency crews from getting to my home. 

I will bundle up in snow pants (still call them that after all these years) and coat and hat and gloves and face mask until I am  "sausaged" in a way very similar to the little brother in the Christmas Classic - "A Christmas Story.  Okay, I have talked about this long enough.  Going to do it now!

Path to street OPEN

10:30 Once again I magnified a problem well beyond its proportions.  With the aid of my ice scraper and a square nosed spade, it took only about 40 minutes open the path to the street.  The snow was for the most part "freeze dried" making lighter to remove that I imagined.  The unexpected challenge was that the "snow boulders" did not stay where I put them!  They rolled right off the top of the pile and landed on the already cleared sidewalk.  I quickly learned to slow down and aim my shovel carefully.

It feels really really good to have reduced this problem to its proper proportion allowing me to get the job done...done just in time for MORE SNOW due to arrive early tomorrow for rush hour.  And winter doesn't officially start until Tuesday, December 21st.  Ahhhhh, Minnesota...

Now it is time to bake vegan Snappy Ginger Cookies, put them in cookie tins and store them in the antique dry sink (aka walk-in cooler) on the porch for Christmas.  The aroma of Gramma's Date Bread I made yesterday still lingers wondrously.