muted colors

Snow is falling this morning. No sun worship for the cat or for me.

The forecast says to expect only a few inches, but it looks like nature might intend to bless us with more than that. I shall pack my shovels and buckets of sand and salt in the truck before I leave, just to be sure I have the necessary bits as I travel today.

Funny how my search for a definition of my higher power seems to have faded into the background of the big news of my call to ministry. I spent no small amount of time and energy exploring what I think god might be, and how I might relate to said god, and then I got the lightning bolt thing and it all sort of faded in comparison.

The snow is reminding me that I can worship here in the morning. There is no sun to warm my face and make the cat and I blink in unison, but there is beauty just the same. Snowflakes are falling by the millions, sometimes they come in tiny little flakes and other times they lumber down from the heavens like so many little toy army men with handkerchief parachutes, big and round and white against the pale blue of the early morning dusk.

I can feel the tension in me drain away as I watch. The seem to rinse the stress from my body as they fall past me outside my window. It is as though I were standing in a shower of snowflakes and they were washing off dust and sweat and grime as they fall. I did not know I carried that much tension in the morning, but I am noticing it as it goes away.

It is a conscious act to relax like this, to submit, and let nature's metaphorical touch wash away the things that make me uncomfortable. Worship does not always happen like this for me, but I like it. I like relaxing onto the experience, to feel my body drop into a kind of altered state of relaxation, allowing the universe to be in control instead of me. It is a familiar feeling, but not one I generally experience in this context.

I know I have to go soon, to move aside nature's offerings so that people can come and go without walking through the snow and getting their feet wet. They will not look at this snow the way I am now. To them it will be a nuisance, a thing that makes walking and driving slower and more hazardous than normal. It will irritate them. It may well irritate me, too, as I drive from place to place, but I will try to remember this moment, the feeling of submission to the divine as I am joined with nature and the universe.

pictures!

OK, so these are not whiz-bang beautiful shots like some of my friends make, these are just pictures I took today of places I shoveled yesterday.

First, I had to get out the door. This was problematic.

The first place I shoveled was the church. It has a ramp, some sidewalks, and some paths through the yard. Take a peek.

And these are the front steps. They are daunting when covered with snow, trust me.

After the church was done, I went to visit a lady who used to ride my bus and whom I help out with chores like snow removal and trash pickup and such. She has a short walkway, but I did have to rake the snow off her roof as well to prevent her from getting whacked by one of the growing icicles along the eave.

Last place I went to was the place with the metal roof and the big deck that I had such a time clearing from accumulated snow and ice last year. Here's what it looked like after 24 hours of intermittent rain and warm temperatures.

Today we went to the big box hardware store to pick up some conduit and then I came home and did some really cool geometry like I showed you the other day and tomorrow I might do some puttering in the basement.

Stay tuned.

ouch (snow, part II)

Oh man.

After I got home from shoveling last night, the skies opened up and dumped a solid foot of heavy, wet snow on this island.

When I woke at 5 a.m., wet snow was still falling, mixed with spatters of rain. I shoveled out the truck, got it started and warmed it up and packed my thermos of coffee. I was at the church by 6 a.m. The plow guy had not arrived yet to clear the parking lot, so I parked my truck across the street and waded through the heavy berm of snow left by the municipal street plow.

The snow was so wet and heavy I had a hell of a time moving it. You would never have guessed by looking that I had cleared all of the sidewalks and paths just over 12 hours earlier. I started working, and before long the plow guy arrived. I used my large push scoop, which is easier on my back than a shovel, but the snow was still heavy and it was work.

Before an hour was out, I was sweating heavily in my turtleneck, hoodie and Columbia rain shell, so I stashed the hoodie back in the truck. With intermittent rain and snow still falling, I wanted the rain shell as opposed to the hooded sweatshirt, which would get wet, cold and heavy in short order.

I have advice for anyone who plans on depending on Columbia gear to keep them dry: don't. The shell was only moderately water-resistant. I was soaked to the skin by 8 a.m. As long as I kept working and was warm, I was OK. If I slowed at all, I started to get chilled. I drank my coffee when I could and kept moving.

I had a helper this morning. Interesting guy, named Ian. I don't know much about him other than he is a young, kind of loosely-wrapped hippie kind of guy with baggy pants, funky crocheted beret/beanie thing that mostly contains his dreadlocks, and he has a female partner and a two-year-old daughter. I met him once at one of the local organic/natural foods places when his daughter was expressing her free spirit by running up and down the aisles at full speed and volume. She was a cute kid and was not doing harm to anything beyond my nerves, so what the hell, right?

I was shoveling yesterday afternoon when he walked by with a shovel over his shoulder.

"Need some help?"

"You mean that?"

"Of course" he said, with a huge grin.

OK, I said - go clean off the front steps of the church.

Incredibly, his grin got wider and he trotted off toward the front of the church. For the record, HERE is the link to the church's website. It has a picture of the church and most of the front steps. They're about 25 or 30 feet wide, with two sets of steps and two large flat areas. In other words, it's a lot of real estate to clear of snow. I figured it would keep him busy for a while.

And it did. I finished up the rest of the paths and walkways, then brought my scoop around to help Ian finish up the front. He'd done an admirable job, and was still cheerfully tossing snow hither and yon. I invited him to return in the morning, and he gladly agreed. I think my promise of cash in the morning may have helped fuel his enthusiasm.

So this morning in the rain and snow, Ian comes loping cheerfully down the sidewalk, shiny shovel over his shoulder. He started immediately on the front steps, then cleaned them up really nice and salted well.

Together we got it done and parted company with a pledge to call him if I needed help again. He's a good guy, and his perpetually cheerful demeanor was really kinda fun to be around.

So, after we parted company, I went and did my other two residential places that I take care of. More heavy, wet snow, and raking of roofs to prevent ice dams and dangerous icicle development. By the end of the day, I could barely stand upright. There was so much heavy, wet snow, and it was sooooo wet and sooooo heavy, there really was no good way to move it that did not involve lots of back muscles.

I brought home Chinese take-out and peeled out of my thoroughly soaked clothes. Even my socks inside my boots were wet. Everything I have hurts. Every muscle aches. My left shoulder is giving me fits. If I move just so, I get a sharp pain. I tweaked the thumb on my left hand as well, and it's stiff now.

It was a very, very long wet, cold, miserable day. The Congregational Church people were delighted with the job we did, and my other two customers were pleased as well. I have to go back tomorrow to clean off the roof of the church and put some calcium pucks up there to melt away any ice dams.

If the weather and the roads are clear, I might go get some conduit for my metal project, and then do some more cool geometry and pattern-making. I have tried to make a technical drawing of the thing I want to make, but it always looks bad. I'll see if I can work up something better to share.

Stay tuned.

snow

It's been snowing for three solid days now. It is Saturday, and I finally went out to clear some snow from my accounts, and spent the better part of the day at the business end of a push-scoop. It moves snow quickly and efficiently and with a minimum amount of wear and tear on my back, unlike the old-fashioned shovel I used last year.

This is really the first BIG storm of this winter. Oh, we got a few snowstorms in November and December, but they dumped maybe 6 or 8 inches and then left. This bad boy? Well, let's say he's settled in and has his feet up on the coffee table. It started snowing on Thursday, New Year's Eve. We lost electricity briefly that night, but they were restored and then it kept snowing all day Friday and Friday night. Now it is Saturday, and it has been snowing and blowing all day again today. It is forecast to continue through the night and all day tomorrow, tapering off sometime Sunday night or Monday morning. Ugh.

My sermon for tomorrow morning has been postponed until next month due to the bad weather. See, UUs have the good sense to cancel services when the weather turns to shit.

Congregationalists? Not so much. I have to be at the church nice and early to get the paths and steps cleared so people will be able to get in for the 10 a.m. service. My plan is to arrive at around 5 and start clearing. When I was there this afternoon, the walkways I shoveled first were already covered with an inch of snow by the time I finished the last ones. I expect tomorrow morning will offer a similar kind of exercise. It feels like a WPA project, only I clear the path and nature fills it back in again. Grr.

With any luck, I'll get some pictures of what I'm doing, but those may have to wait for Monday's final clean-up round. Stay tuned.

I'm getting too old for this...

How can something so pretty be so miserable?

I awoke this morning at about 3 o'clock with my arms on fire.

They weren't really on fire, but they certainly felt like it. No matter which way I moved, I could not get to a spot that was comfortable for both my back and my arms. So I got up and went pee and came back to bed. L was snoring because of her cold, so I amused myself by poking and prodding her for a while until she rolled over either in disgust or out of self-preservation. In any case, the noise quieted down and my arms ached a little less and I was able to get back to sleep.

Remember yesterday's post about the icebergs we had to chop through and remove? Well, here's the after picture. I never thought to get a "before" shot, damn it. Take a look at those piles of snow, though. They were all assembled by hand, one shovel-full at a time. Oof. One day's work crippled me up pretty bad.



I was next to useless today, though. I am going to bill my clients for half-rate for my time. It's all I was worth. Even after I replaced the belt on the snow blower. It threw the belt in protest after I asked it to chop and chew snow that was two-days frozen in the driveway. But it chewed the belt first. I brought the shredded remains with me to the hardware store to find a match.

Fixing the belt was a cool thing that I have never done before but was pleased to be able to figure out and fix by myself. Hardware store guy was a big help looking up the right size belt just to cross-check that I had the right one. Brought it back, figured out how to loop it, and started 'er back up with a roar. Heh. mighty pleased with myself, indeed.

While I was kneeling in the frozen driveway fiddling with wrenches and auger belts, my lovely assistant A was up on the roof clearing away nature's latest offering. I am soooooooo glad we got the snow off there Sunday before this batch fell. Holy crap. Here's what it looked like when we started today:




So we took at it again. Those ice dams are not to be trifled with. In this link, the University of Minnesota Extension Service offers a very thorough and easy-to-understand description of what ice dams are, where they come from and what they can do to damage a home. I've tried to post graphics from other places here with only limited success, so I won't do that again, but I highly recommend checking out that site. Ice dams are worth getting freaked out about. My bet is these homeowners will have me back again in the spring to stuff the insulation more thoroughly into the far corners of the eaves to prevent this from happening again next year.

So anyway, we get to work. I am next to useless, as I said before. I stay on the ground where I am less likely to hurt myself. My lovely assistant, A, though, is in much better shape. She climbed up on the roof and got to work. Notice that she is wearing jeans, sneakers (with Yak trax), gloves, and a freakin' tank top! Where she was, in the sun, out of the wind, working hard and then surrounded by black asphalt shingles, she claimed to be plenty warm. I think my hot flashes might be catching up with her. Heh.


While she was up on the roof accomplishing great things, I puttered on the ground, noticing small things. Like this track in the fresh snow:

That is a deer track, for the uninitiated. We watched a herd of about ten deer scamper through the woods and down the hill while we worked today. That little section of woods is right up against Acadia National Park and the deer abound. This is a hard year for them, though. With all this snow, forage is hard to find and coyotes have a much easier time bringing down a deer in deep snow.

Here's what the driveway looked like about the time the damned machine chewed and threw the auger belt:


I did get the rest of it cleared once the belt was replaced, but it was slow going. I ended up having to shovel some as well. That was more work than I could have imagined.

An old, rotted tree trunk came over in the storm. It hardly looks out of place at first, until you notice that it is broken off just above the snow line.


Then, when we looked up at the rest of the dead tree, we noticed that it was well tangled with a couple live trees and some (presumably) live power lines. I'll have the property owners call the power company when they get home. There are no sparks or weirdness right now, but it really should be addressed before the next storm brings it all down in a tangled heap.



While I was putzing on the ground, A mastered the art of the gentle tap with the ice chisel. She's got a knack for using this thing so that it smacks the ice on top but does not plunge through and scar what's underneath. I watched her do it yesterday on a wooden deck, and again today on the roof edges. She's a marvel. I would be so screwed without her on this job.


And then we were done. The driveway is cleared, but I have not finished playing with that section of pictures yet. But the roofs look fabulous:



We've got to go back tomorrow to get rid of the large berm at the end of the driveway that the town snowplow left there, and we'll probably knock down whatever icicles remain. A well salted them today, so they should come down cleanly. I hope my arms work better tomorrow than they did today. Good grief. I can't afford to charge half-rates for too many days in a row.

recipe time

OK, I am beat. I mean really and truly beat. My lovely assistant and I today spent just over seven hours clearing a season's worth of accumulated snow and compacted came-off-the-metal-roof-in-a-big-icy-lump stuff off a deck. My hands can hardly work. My fingers don't want to type. The flesh on the insides of my hands - the palms and that side of my fingers feels strange. Like it's been smacked several times with the pointy side of a meat tenderizer mallet. Yeah. Like that.

This deck is probably 16 by 16 feet, surrounded on three sides by metals roofs that run the snow right down into the middle. We have dutifully shoveled a path up the center of this thing after each storm, but now there was enough snow and accumulated ice and such to cause some real concern about what that kind of weight might be doing to the deck itself.

So we attacked the twin masses with shovels. And got absolutely nowhere. The stuff was frozen into two solid icebergs, one in either side of the deck. Encased in one iceberg was a gas grill and a plastic watering can. Entombed in the ice on the other side of the deck was a plastic storage container for lawn chair cushions. None of these items were visible when we started.

The icebergs were about five feet high and about six feet deep. They each ran the length of the deck, about 16 feet, maybe a little more. One side got sun and was easier to break up. The other side was not in the sun and required a pick-ax.

Yes, a pick-ax.

I told A that I did not know whether to be thrilled or terrified that she happened to have a pick-ax with her. She simply grunted and swung high. I'd have been lost without her on this job.

The icebergs turned out to be historical things. We could look at the striations and recognize each storm's snow. The really thick layers of ice were from that couple of nasty storms we had in mid-January. The others were less distinct. It had the feel of an archaeological expedition.

I uncovered the watering can in what must have been the Cambrian Era.

We never found any fossils, though. And I dearly wish I had taken before and after pictures. I do have one picture of the deck from that first doozy of a storm earlier in the season. Remember this?


I'll swing over and take a picture tomorrow to show the new and improved snowbanks. You'll be impressed.

Oh, hell. Recipe time. Remember the recipe? This was supposed to be a post about a recipe.

Because I have a first-time commenter who is also a first-class storyteller in her own right, I will post the recipe to yesterday's sticky buns per the request of Gladys. Visit her blog and prepare to be entertained. Very neat site. Family friendly. Way more so than this one. I didn't see any pictures of women tied to equipment on her blog. Doesn't seem like that kind of place. But wicked cool nonetheless. Here's the recipe, straight from the Bread Machine Magic Cookbook, by Linda Rehberg & Lois Conway. Published in 1992 by St. Martin's Press, New York. ISBN 0-312-06914-6 (paperback original) for you book geeks. I think it might be out of print, but it is a gem. Pick it up if you see it at a yard sale.

For a one-pound loaf. I use a bread machine. I am sure real bread-makers will know how to adapt this to by-hand methods. Please feel free to do that. I use the machine.

Dough:

1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast

Select dough setting on machine, put all ingredients in the hopper and press start. Now go have a cup of coffee (or two) and read your email while it does its thing. About 10 minutes before it's done, you'll need to assemble the rest of the stuff.

Topping:
2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup light or dark corn syrup
1/2 cup walnuts (I added these, they're not really in the recipe. Pecans would be good, too.)

Filling:

1 tablespoon melted butter or margarine
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I used waaaay more than that)
1/4 cup raisins

Deal with the topping first.

Brush 1 tablespoon of the melted butter onto the bottom and sides of a 9 inch round cake pan (9 by 9 square would work, too.)

Sprinkle in the brown sugar and nuts, then drizzle the corn syrup over the rest. Set aside. Hang onto that other bit of melted butter. We'll get to it shortly.

When the dough beeps and is ready, turn it out onto a floured board and knead a few times. Roll it out into a large rectangle - about 12 by 10 inches.

Brush with the melted butter, then sprinkle with the raisins, brown sugar and dust vigorously with cinnamon.

Next, roll up the dough along its longest edge and pinch it tightly to seal the seam. Gently mark out 12 or 16 pieces with a knife (but don't cut the dough with the knife - it will be bad!). Cut the pieces using a 12-inch piece of dental floss by sliding it under the roll and then bringing the two ends across the top to slice the dough cleanly.

Place the slices cut side up on top of the topping already in the pan and brush with that other tablespoon of melted butter. (I told you we'd get back to it!)

Cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place for 30 to 45 minutes, or until they double in size.

Preheat the oven to 325 F and bake for 45 minutes.

Remove from the pan and invert on a plate. Let the pan sit for about 2 or 3 minutes to allow all the oozy-goozy caramel to let go of the pan and adhere to the rolls. Lift off the pan and serve while hot.

These are yummy while hot and will break a filling when cold. They don't keep terribly well, but microwave tolerably. When I am awake enough to remember, I add the raisins right into the dough when the machine beeps partway through the second kneading cycle. When I am not that awake, I spread them on the flat dough.

That's it. A daily report of my oh-so-dull life, a shout-out to a new blog buddy, and a recipe. Now I'm going to find a snack and head to bed. 7:30 p.m. is not too early for bed, is it?

Snow art

Or perhaps, the art of snow removal.


Notice how nature arranged the snow in a swirling pattern with my rear view mirror in the center. It is beautiful, but is means that the snow has been blowing hard and is going to be heavy to move.

Who knew back-breaking work could be considered and art form? I am beginning to think so.

I have some friends who asked me to do some snow removal for them while they're poolside in a warm place sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them. I hate them today. Just sayin'.

So I have been keeping an eye on the weather and saw that we were going to get a foot or more of heavy wet snow today. So yesterday I went to take a look at their place. There was some snow in the yard, and a large berm at the end of the driveway thanks to the town plow, but that was not what concerned me the most.

Here's the view when we first got there:


Not bad. Some snow in the driveway, some steps to clear, not bad at all. But then I saw these two things:




SO what? you might say. Well, icicles are dangerous things. They mean that there is ice behind them (I know, it's a shocker). Well, that ice backs up at the roof's edge and LIFTS THE ROOF SHINGLES when it expands (water expands when it freezes, remember) and leaks in and wrecks ceilings and walls.

From the way the house is situated, not much sun gets to the roof, certainly not enough to melt away the snow naturally, so there was probably a foot of snow up there. a cubic foot of snow (12 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches deep) weighs approximately 20 pounds. More if it's heavy. Today we're still getting pummeled with a storm that has already dropped close to a foot of very wet, heavy snow. Knowing that it was coming, and knowing what it would do to those ice dams, I made the executive decision to get as much of that snow weight off the roof as we could and to see if we could get rid of that ice before more joined it.

I climbed up there with shovels and a snow scoop pushing thing and a bucket of salt and some ice dam melting pucks and set to work. And work it was! Heavy, heavy stuff up there! Wow. Ice frozen to the moss on the roof! I had to be very careful how I cleared it. Some was left, but that's OK, it was the weight and the ice dams that concerned me, not the aesthetics. I called in reinforcements in the person of my friend and ace helper A, who climbed up and cleared what I had started. Here's a picture of the icicle at the crotch of the porch and kitchen/dining room roof:


And here's one of her spreading ice melt stuff on the dam at the eave along the living room wall.


You can't see them, but there are some little white hockey-puck looking things lined up along that ice dam just uphill of the edge. They are designed to melt heavy ice like what is here, and I hope that they are doing their job under today's new batch of snow. They're pretty amazing things, so I have hope that they're working. Chemistry is wicked cool. If I can get the ice dams gone, we can avoid some real damage to the house. Getting rid of the built up snow was essential - today's accumulation could have done further damage to the roof. Talk about bullets dodged. No shit.

I have no idea if this next part will work. If you see a map, notice the little white cross-hairs in a circle sort of to the right. That's Mount Desert Island. That's where I am. Weather here in New England tends to move in a north-by-easterly direction. That means that there is a nasty-looking pocket of snow still headed our way. I refuse to leave the house until I am pretty sure it's mostly over.

Zoom Map Click:

Zoom In

Zoom Out

Pan Map

(Full Zoom Out)

I have just put caramel sticky buns in the oven. I am headed for the shower while they bake. After the shower and breakfast, there really will be very little stalling left for me to do and I will have to head out into this crap. Think warm thoughts on my behalf.

my country for snow...

Now I know that sounds weird, but honestly, what I wouldn't give for a simple snow storm about now. I just finished the first day of cleaning up a nasty snow/sleet/ice storm. It was horrible. Even though I had good people to work with AND I got to buy a flamethrower (no shit!). And I got to almost flirt with the straight girl who really trips my gaydar trigger, but hey. All the shoveling sucked. The snow was crusted with about a half-inch layer of this nasty ice stuff, and the fluffy stuff underneath was only fluffy for a while. Down at the bottom, where the snow meets the sidewalk or driveway? another layer of ice UNDER which was slush. It was just nasty. And I've got to go out there again tomorrow and finish. I may just bring marshmallows to liven it up.

If you're looking for enlightenment, education and/or entertainment tonight, try one of the blogs over there on the right. I'm headed to bed.

snow day

If I was a kid in school, I'd be pissed.

We got a ton of snow today. Enough that school would have been canceled if it had been a weekday. I used to hate weekend snowstorms when I was a kid. Wasted snow, I called it. A weekend snowstorm meant dad would make me get a shovel and help. On a weekday, I was considered too small to do it myself, so the plow guy came. I had to shovel the steps and path and stuff. And maybe the mailbox area. But on a Saturday or Sunday? We were saving money, getting exercise and bonding. Yeah. Right.

I got up early today to go shovel out the Congo church. Nice folks, and this was my first storm, so I wanted to make a good impression. I was there early and shoveled like mad, only to look back at the top of the steps I had just cleared and see that the granite was white again with snow. Shit.

Hearkening back to the old Eli Lily ad slogan, "Better Living Through Chemistry," I spread something like 20 pounds of ice melt stuff on the massive front steps (30 feet wide, going up maybe 8 or 10 feet. Okay, maybe six feet, but it felt like more than that. I can't see onto the top step from the street, so that's close to 6 or 8 feet, right? Right. Anyway, I sanded the piss out of that baby, then spread around enough road sand pilfered from the public sand pile (for those readers not from New England, each town has a stockpile of sand mixed with road salt to spread on the roads by the snowplows. The public is granted access to that sand pile, generally with the understanding that commercial contractors will not take advantage. I figure I am not bringing it home to use, so I am just running an errand for the homeowners. It's their tax-dollar-paid-for-sand, so I have very little guilt over it.

Today we got about 8 to 10 inches of snow. Then it began to rain. A lot. I shoveled the Congregational Church this morning for their service, but about six inches had fallen before it turned to rain. When we get there tomorrow it will be flat-out nasty. I have hired a helper for the day, but I think we're both going to be taking pre-emptive doses of Advil. Gonna be a long day tomorrow.

I'll try to have those interview questions out tomorrow after work. And I have to do a cool thing for that neat award that Robin gave me. Please be patient with me. I'm working on it.

Snowy day, interview me!

Look at this week's weather forecast for my part of the county:

Forecast for Coastal Hancock
Updated: 3:16 p.m. EST on January 17, 2009
Winter Storm Warning in effect from 7 a.m. Sunday to 7 a.m. EST Monday...

Tonight

Increasing clouds with snow likely after midnight. Little or no snow accumulation. Lows zero to 5 above zero. West winds around 5 mph...becoming north late this evening...then becoming east after midnight. Chance of snow 60 percent.

Sunday

Snow. Snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches. Brisk with highs in the lower 30s. Southeast winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. Chance of snow 90 percent.

Sunday Night

Snow...mainly in the evening. Snow may be heavy at times in the evening. Additional snow accumulation of 7 to 9 inches. Total snow accumulation 10 to 14 inches. Windy with lows in the mid 20s. Southeast winds 20 to 30 mph... becoming southwest 15 to 20 mph after midnight. Chance of snow 90 percent.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Mostly cloudy. Snow likely in the morning...then a chance of snow showers in the afternoon. Highs in the lower 30s. Northwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 70 percent.

Monday Night

Mostly cloudy with a 40 percent chance of snow showers. Lows around 17. North winds 5 to 10 mph.

Tuesday

Mostly cloudy with a chance of flurries. Highs in the upper 20s.

Tuesday Night

Mostly cloudy. Lows around 10 above.

Wednesday and Wednesday Night

Partly cloudy. Highs in the lower 20s. Lows around 10 above.

Thursday and Thursday Night

Partly cloudy. Highs in the mid 20s. Lows 5 to 10 above.

Friday

Partly sunny. A chance of snow in the afternoon. Highs in the mid 20s. Chance of snow 30 percent.

Friday Night

Cloudy with a chance of rain and snow. Lows around 10 above. Chance of precipitation 50 percent.

Saturday

Mostly cloudy. A chance of snow showers in the morning. Highs around 30. Chance of snow 50 percent.

The upshot of this is that the snow and clouds and flurries and all the rest NEVER FUCKING END!Holy crap. I'm going to be shoveling for the rest of my life. No cutting metal. No welding metal. No really cool naughty thing. Just me and a shovel and some buckets of sand.

Today I went over to the local Congregational Church where I am the new snow-removal contractor. Not my regular rate, but I figure if I do a decent job, it will work in to more work down the line at my normal rate. Plus I plan to leave a stack of fliers in the vestibule. That can't hurt.

So I went over to see what was up and to clean up a little before tonight's church supper. The person who had the job before me apparently missed entirely that slushy snowstorm we had last week before the current five-day freeze-a-palooza we've been enjoying so much. With three inches of fresh slush on the ground before the Sunday service, it seems that people just tromped through, hoping the kid would come back to clean it up before it froze. He didn't. So now the walkways are covered with packed, solid-frozen ice. Lumpy, bumpy ice from all those footprints when it was still slush. Yeah. So I got there and with a metal roofing shovel, an ice chopper and two different snow shovels AND a broom, I set to work. I chopped what I could, swept the crumbs away and spread over 50 pounds of ice melt stuff on what was left. That and just over two buckets of sand from the town pile. Nobody will slip coming out of the supper tonight, although they might turn an ankle. I worked from about 2 p.m. until well after dark when L. came and we went in and enjoyed the supper. Now I am pooped. More snow is coming. I have three accounts now, and while that doesn't sound like much, one of them is a big, public church where lots of people come and go. It is important that I be there, be visible and be responsive when people ask if this can be shoveled or that can be sanded. Which means I am going to have to get up in the morning (like 5 in the morning!) to see if there is snow on the ground that needs to be addressed. Shit. I'm pooped from all that chopping, shoveling and sweeping already. Damn.

So, I am going to post an interview that asthmagirl over at Is My Cape Fluttering? did of me. She got tagged with an interview in which someone asked her five questions. Then she accepted five "interview me" requests in her comments section. I said what the hell and signed up. So she asked five questions and I answered. Here they are. I do hope I was interesting enough without being scandalous this time:

1.. Why did you start blogging? What do you hope to accomplish with your blog?

I'm not sure why I started. Peer pressure, maybe. I've got a couple friends who kept saying "you oughta have a blog." I thought they were nuts. I still think so. Accomplish? You mean I'm supposed to accomplish something? Shit. Actually, I think the writing exercise is very good, and the mental work I have to go through to make sure my thoughts are in order before I put them down on the page is very helpful. I guess you could say that I hope to better organize my thinking and writing efforts.

2. Do you think gays will be victorious and attain the right to marry across the board (all states)? When?

Dear god, I hope so. I have no idea when this will happen. I think it will take several states having very good marriage equality laws and then a shift in the SCOTUS to the point where a case can be brought and argued to enforce the free faith and contract clause in the Constitution. The people on the court right now don't seem all that concerned with the Constitution and what is says and mean.

3. Why did you get into the building trades?

I was burned out (fired) in the newspaper world and found myself doing what I always did between jobs - working hanging wallpaper, painting, building this and fixing that. A friend suggested Women Unlimited, which at that time was offering a 14-week course in Bridge and Road Construction. I signed up, was accepted, got my dump truck license, learned how to read blueprints, learned how to weld, got certified in a 40-hour OSHA course and learned a bunch of stuff. I was accepted into the Sheet Metal Worker's International Association and became the first woman to enter the apprenticeship program in Maine. I left after three years. The work was not steady and involved a lot of travel away from home. I went back to newspapering for a while, but then migrated back to the trades. Today I am self-employed, and that seems to work best for me. I like the freedom, I like learning new things. I like the independence.

4. What do you like best about living in Maine?

The ocean is only a few hundred yards from where I lay my head to sleep each night. I can hear the harbor buoy bell in the evening. Last week an eagle soared in circles over my house, hunting for prey in the field out back. I am surrounded by natural beauty. It is a marvelous thing. In the summer we are overrun with tourists, but there are still places where we can go that they won't follow. I like that. But standing on the rocks and watching the surf pound after a February storm has got to be one of the most beautiful things in the world. Nature is a violent, beautiful force. She will have her way.

5. What do you think of the 'throwing the shoes' custom on tv not long ago? Who would you throw your shoes at? Would you want them back afterwards?

I love the shoe-throwing thing. But I am cheap enough that I have a problem with throwing something - presumably away - that is useful. Why throw away a perfectly good shoe? Throw an old ratty one, that's fine, but this business of throwing a new shoe is just wasteful. Unless you actually got to hit the shrub in the kisser. Then I'd give up my very favorite black leather DeWalt steel-toed work boots if I could do that. Shit, it'd even be worth six months of jail time to claim credit for that one. He could even keep the boots. If I did get them back, I'd auction them off to benefit some queer cause of my choice. Heh. Hit the shrub in the kisser AND raise money for queer stuff? That'd be just perfect!

OK, now I am going to do the same thing she did. The first five people who leave a note saying "interview me" in the comments section will get five questions from me that they can post on their blogs, etc. It really was not a bad writing prompt at all. Leave me a note and I'll e-mail you the questions.

snow pics

Still behind the gym. Here are some pictures of what I shoveled Monday. There is a long front walk and a big driveway. Note how high the banks of snow are on each side and think "she did all that with a shovel?" Yeah. My concern now is the heavy snow on the metal roof - I fear it will come down and form a huge, sodden (then frozen) mound in front of all the exits to the house.

Texture is everything

OK, maybe quantity is important, too.

I'm talking about snow here, kids. Get yer minds outta the gutter!

You saw the post of Quinn's most UN-excellent adventure to go pee last night. Poor thing couldn't squat, because no matter what she did, her feet never hit anything solid and the snow was ALWAYS snug up against her undercarriage. Think about that for a moment, will you? Brrr!

The snow last night was wet and sticky - great for snowballs and snowmen and forts and stuff like that. Except it was pitch black, cold as hell and blowing a gale, so we opted not to make snow sculptures in our yard. Well, after the snow stopped falling and the clouds cleared, the temperature dropped. All of that wet, sticky snow turned solid. The wind had compacted it quite solidly in several places in the yard, including under the bumper and whole driver's side of my truck. The kitchen door opened only because L went out there last night and shoveled a wee little space on the steps to allow that to happen.

The upshot of all this verbiage? That shit was heavy. I mean seriously heavy. But dry, so it didn't stick to the shovel, like wet snow will do. That'll jerk your arm right out of the socket when you're trying to fling snow and it won't let go of the shovel at the end of your arm's arc. I hate that.

But what did happen was the snow was frozen and compacted, sort of like a cross between flour and frozen cool-whip. I could cut great square cubes of snow with my shovel - so great in fact that I could barely lift them. I ended up chopping squares, then scooping the top half of the square off before going back for the bottom half. That's a lot of chopping and scooping and tossing, let me tell you.

And the day just got longer and longer as it went. Shovel out the truck, get it unstuck (LOVE 4WD!) head out and do one lady's walk and path for the oil man. Go to next account, shovel wide path up front, extra wide to allow access for emergency personnel if necessary (they're seniors, so I fuss and fret over them) In through the house to the garage and the little snow blower. That. just. won't. start.

No matter what we do. Push this, pull that, push the little squirty button a bunch, spray starter stuff in there, nada. Well, I told the gent, I've shoveled bigger and worse. He did not look convinced, but it's true. When I was a kid and there was a snow day, I shoveled. And we had a looooong driveway.

The only way to do something like this is one row at a time, one scoop at a time and just keep going.

I set to work. The driveway is probably 18 feet wide by 40 or 50 feet long. It was filled with that self-same dense-packed stuff I described above. To a depth ranging from about 12 inches to about 30 inches (wind had made drifts as well). There was an absolutely obscene mound of snow and crap at the mouth of the driveway left by the town plow truck. Fortunately, I begged a favor from a guy I knew in the next parking lot. His truck had a plow, so he came and knocked it back a bit for me. Still, it was a long haul. After three hours, I was nearly all-in.

But they had a friend who needed help getting her car shoveled out, so I went there and helped her. Turns out she had another friend who needed HER car shoveled out, so I went over to the other parking lot. Then I remembered that I was supposed to bring the snow blower to the garage, I went back to the other place, picked it up (literally - it's not that big) and dropped it off.

By the time I hit the bank to deposit all of my riches it was already getting dark. I got home to find that I had absconded with all the good shovels this morning, so I still had to dig out L's car for us to take to Massachusetts in the morning.

As they say in Minnesota, Uf-da!

I am some freakin' sore tonight. My back hurts from the backs of my knees all the way up and over and down again to my chin. Damn. My face is windburned, although I did keep lip balm on, so I am not bleeding as well. I think I will probably not be able to move tomorrow. A four-hour-and-a-bit ride in the Crown Vic will be a wonderful thing - that car rides like my couch, but more comfortable.

Posting may be spotty due to the sneak-around factor at my aunt's house for the next few days, so please bear with me. I'll be behind the gym with the pilfered smokes. Winston reds.

P.S. I'll try to get a picture of the yards I shoveled before we leave town tomorrow and post them here if I can. You gotta see this stuff!

A story in three chapters

Chapter 1.


Chapter 2 (with notation).


Chapter 3.


The end.

Einstein she ain't

Quinn is sitting in her window sill seat and barking... at the snow in the yard.

Sigh.

Not ferocious "get out of my yard or I'll rip you to shreds" barks, just little "I'm not sure I like this or really know what it is... there's something different and I'm weirded out by it" barks.

Woof. (long pause) Grrrrrroof. (pause) grrrroof. grrr. mrph.

I hurt

I hurt today.

Really bad.

We went down to the big city of Portland Saturday, stayed overnight at Motel 1.4 or whatever, and then came back Sunday. Only Sunday it snowed.

In Portland, it was pretty. There was an inch or two of wet, fluffy flakes - just right for snowballs, but not enough for snowmen yet. The roads in town were a little greasy, but the highway was OK. We headed north toward home at just before noon, and the highway was clear-ish for quite a while. But after Brunswick, it got colder, and by the time we reached Augusta, it was starting to get a little hinky. Traffic seemed to want to go much faster than I was willing to drive, so we got off the highway and took the coastal route down Route 3. Bad idea. Apparently nobody wanted to pay plow truck drivers overtime rates on a Sunday for less than six inches of snow, so things were barely plowed at all. Greasy and slippery and we saw several places where cars had hit the guardrail or slid off into the ditch. We crept along, vowing every few miles to get studded snow tires as soon as we get a few hundred dollars together to do it. I was tense the whole way home. A drive that normally takes about 3 hours took four and a half. It was hellish.

I spent some time last night on that vibrating massage thing that fits in the armchair, and that was nice, but not nearly enough. Then this morning the power went off sometime between four and six a.m. I may have mentioned here before that I have a sleep apnea, if not: I have a sleep apnea. I wear a face mask attached to a hose that constantly pushes air into my lungs as I sleep. The machine is called a C-PAP and it is a lifesaver. I am useless if I do not wear it for a night, and if I go more than one nigh without it, I am punch-drunk and incapable of any productive effort. So anyway, when the power went out, my little "breathe machine" as I call it, crapped out, leaving me with a mask over my nose and mouth and no air coming in. Helluva way to wake up, let me assure you. So, I took it off and tried to go back to sleep, but that doesn't work much at all, and when the power came back on and I finally got out of bed, my back was so stiff and sore that I could hardly bend over. Lacing my boots actually brought tears to my eyes. It's bad.

I had to get up, though, because I have some really cool senior citizen folks who depend on me to shovel out their driveways and front walks, and I knew they'd be wanting to get out of the house today. Mind you, I can't bend over, so shovelling would have been comical had it not hurt so much. Luckily, most of it could be pushed and scraped clear and I didn't have to bend and lift.

So anyway, after that, I hit the grocery store and limped on home. I am still dressed in my work clothes (the boots are as far away now as they were this morning, and I'm not excited to try that again) but hope to find my pajamas soon. Maybe sweatpants. I might travel down into the next village to sozzle in my friends' spa for a little while. We'll see how it goes with the boots first. Maybe a hot shower will be enough to let me relax a little. The spa sounds great, but it's the coming and going in 6 degree (that's Farenheit, for my Canadian and foreign readers) temperatures with sub-zero wind chills (it's howlin' a gale out theyah) that causes me some concern. How relaxed am I going to be if I have to run that gauntlet before and after the sozzle? Meh.

I suppose someone will tell me to go to the doctor, and that sounds like a great idea, but I haven't got insurance, and I haven't got any money, so hot showers and gentle treatment are what I've got to work with. Maybe I'll get the cat to curl up with me on the couch. He's a good heating pad.