A Doozie

March 19, 2018

A Doozie

Last week, as you all know, we had our third nor'easter (in eleven days, no less). You can tell by the photos, that it was spectacular. Here in Eastern CT, 20' of the beautiful white stuff buried every exposed surface.

The first few hours of the storm brought heavy, wet, snow. In fact, the Pres was still sleeping when I went out to shovel the front walk. Appearing light and fluffy, I was very surprised to discover that once the snow shovel was full, I couldn't lift it off the ground!

I had to push it as if I was playing shuffleboard...LOL. Although I'm chuckling now, I wasn't then!!

Learning a lot about shoveling snw over the years, I decided that I would crank up the snowblower and get an early start on what had fallen. However, I had to move slowly as the 8' of heavy, wet stuff was making the auger work extremely hard. Occasionally I would just stop, release the drive lever to disengage the clutch just to let the snow expel from the chute.

All was going well and I had, in fact, made a nice wide path from the driveway and side of the house to the feeders. Putting it in reverse, I carefully maneuvered the 350 lb 30 inch wide Ariens, walking backwards following the path I'd just cleared. My intent was to turn slightly to the right and head toward the patio, the last on my list.

However, apparently I thought my strength was more than it was so when I yanked the right handle with my right arm to turn it, I pulled/tore something in my arm/shoulder. Managing to finish the patio and return the snowblower to it's resting place for a few hours, I went in to baby myself.

When I looked out the slider, the wind was so strong it was pulling/pushing the birds right off my feeders, which became caked with wet snow all day along. Since my legs were still working, I went out periodically to remove the heavy snow making the seed and suet cakes accessible.

As the morning wore on, the visibility became next to nothing for nearly the remainder of the day. With the heavy stuff plowed after his breakfast, the Pres went out for the second pass only to come in rather quickly.

"Hey, the plow broke, so I'm using the snowblower. You stay put."

Although I didn't outwardly applaud and grin, I was elated that I was relieved of duty.