Calgon, take me away!

I sit here before you today a broken woman and at the point of surrender. In fact, I'd raise the white flag right now--if I could elevate my arms above my head without excrutiating pain, that is. I'm defeated. Beaten down by frozen flakes of water. B#*ch-slapped by Mother Nature. Again.

And yes, that's my SUV to the left as it appeared yesterday morning in my driveway. Imagine my delight when I opened the door and looked out into a winter freakin' wonderland where only a week ago all signs of winter had gloriously melted away. Sigh. The kids were ecstatic. No school, they celebrated, claiming they would rather shovel a few hours than spend the day in classes. That sentiment quickly evaporated when they saw the depth of the snow to be scooped.

Determined to face my frozen foe, I donned my Michael Myers insulated coveralls, hiking boots, Thinsulate gloves, and stuck a hat on my head. How bad could it really be? I thought as I stepped outside the front door and into three foot drift of snow. That bad. "Wow, come look at the roof, Mom!" my daughter said and I walked out to the end of the driveway and looked back at the house. Big mistake. Why? Here's what I saw:


I stared at the roof for a few minutes before it dawned on me that someone was going to have get up on the roof and shovel the snow off or risk having the roof collapse due to the weight. It took me a couple more minutes before I realized that someone was going to be me.

What the picture doesn't accurately reflect is the fact that it was still snowing and blowing at this time. Now, I'm not a fan of climbing a ladder and crawling onto the roof at any time, but doing it in the middle of winter in the middle of a blizzard with snow up the whazoo--well, you can about imagine the level of my affection for Ma Nature right about then.

But trooper that I am--or rather was--I got the ladder out, got someone to hold it and up I went. And the higher I went, the higher my anxiety got. What if my added weight actually made the roof collapse? What if I slipped off the roof and bashed my skull on the driveway? Did the kids know where my will was? So, instead, I climbed to the top step of the ladder and awkwardly scooped shovel after shovel off the roof.

"HEY!" My son who was holding the ladder yelled. I looked down. He looked like a tall, skinny, white-haired Frosty the Snowman.

I winced. "Sorry," I said.

I scooped until my scooper was pooped out. I descended the ladder and looked at the driveway that was once again full of snow. Two hours later we finished the shoveling out front and had cleared out the garage, sidewalk, and one parking space in the back. When I went back into the house, I had so many icicles hanging from my hair I looked like I had dreadlocks.

Three hours later I went back out for round two of shoveling.

"How's the writing going?" the kids asked as I was flopped on the couch with my blanket in the late afternoon.

If I'd had the strength to throw something at them, I would have.

Score so far? Mother Nature: forty plus inches of snow since December. Bullet Hole: 250 pages written since December. It's a race to the March 15th finish for sure. And there's that obsessive competitive streak of mine to consider. So, I toss my white flag aside.

Surrender? Nah. A trooper never surrenders.

Bring it on, Ma Nature. Bring it on!

~Bullet Hole Bacus~