Blow Me

All right. Now we're talkin'. If you live in Maine and it's mid-January, this is the kind of snowstorm you want. Three to five inches of the light, fluffy stuff. None of that mixture of snow and rain that makes you practically shit in your pants from straining with every shovelful you heave over the snowbank. That slushy crap has been the cause of countless hours of profanity, a swimming pool's worth of sweat and, at least, enough Ben-Gay to oil up the entire NFL roster list. Living close to the coast, near Portland, we do seem to get an inordinate amount of the snow/rain gunk.

It only took me an hour to clean our driveway, walkway and back deck. My two, ablebodied sons and lovely wife were happily in Dreamland while I did my husbandly duty. I started at 5:45 AM. and saw no need to wake up Zac and Jon to help out. They had school in a few hours and, considering how easy it was to clean it up with the snowblower, it would've been pretty dickish to haul their asses out of bed instead of letting them be well rested. Also, our State had been blessed with a very mild winter so far.

We Mainers go through three distinct stages of driveway snow removal:

Stage One takes place from November through January. Any snow that falls is quickly cleaned up. Every driveway in our neighborhood is immaculate with nary a snowflake to be seen sullying their works of art.

Stage Two occurs in February. While taking our two dogs on a daily, early-morning walk, I can see that our neighbors, much like me, are taking less pride in their work. The driveways have a more haphazard look. Clumps of snow are scattered about and, if the plow has gone by only after you cleaned, then you may just leave that shit at the end of your driveway until the next snowfall.

Stage Three happens from March until mud season. It is the fuck-it-I-can-drive-through-that-shit attitude.

I finished cleaning the driveway and put the snowblower away. It was early enough in the season that I took pride in doing a nice job. As a bonus, I had slipped on the icy parts of our the driveway and fallen on my ass only three times. I went to wake up the boys. I wondered if they'd notice the great job I did? Yeah... right. It's more likely to rain M&Ms.

(Meyers)