by Lucie Shores

Created on: January 06, 2009   Last Updated: January 14, 2010

Somewhere out there must be an engineer, an inventor, a technician so brilliant, so driven and so talented that humankind would never again need to lift a shovel.    A friend from Hawaii had just moved to Minnesota and when he saw it floating lightly out of the sky for the first time he put a tarp on his driveway, planning to shake it off in the morning.

Shoveling is a nightmare, because it means you have to plan your whole life around each separate snow event. In the morning I see a few inches of snow has fallen. I hear there is seven inches expected in the forecast. That gives me just enough time to shovel out my front door, shower, get to the post office, (the mailbox has long since disappeared) and get home again before the second blizzard.

True, there are alternatives to shoveling snow, but it is difficult to get out the skylight by the time March rolls around.  At the end of winter the snow has created a berm tall enough to cause the neighbors to have forgotten where the house stood, and the squirrels have given up trying to remember where they stashed their acorns.

I go into the bathroom and turn on the shower and feed the fish, leaving their light on so they can see the food. Then out to the kitchen to put the good water in the coffee pot, then the filter and the good coffee grounds. No instant today. I run back to the shower and get in. "Hey!" I yell at myself. I forgot I'd turned off the water heater trying to conserve energy, so I wrap a towel around and tiptoe quickly into the basement to flip the water heater back on. I don't jump in the shower yet. I decide to give it time to heat by having coffee first, so I put some toast in which immediately kicks off the breaker again. Once more I run down and flip the breaker. I hear things start up again. I notice the drip pail is full and empty it in the sink where the heat lamp sits, keeping the bathroom pipes thawed.

Then I head up to the bathroom and get in the shower. It takes a while to get dry enough for long underwear and undershirts to go on smoothly. I dry my hair, put on a turtleneck, leggings, pants, a sweater, socks, jacket, scarf, boots, and mittens. Now I am ready to venture out. I make it down the ramp I had built so my mother could visit, noticing that the small cracks we left in the ramp had not allowed the snow to fall through; not by a long shot.

After trudging through knee-high drifts, I head for the kitchen door and try lifting my first shovel full of snow. The shovel

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