by Judi Silva

Created on: January 12, 2009

Living in Northern New England has always been a vexation for me during the winter months, particularly the years that we are hammered with boatloads of snow, since I neither snowboard, snowshoe or ski! This winter has presented such occasions were my roommate and I have had to shovel our apartment's very long and steep driveway.

Part of the problem with shoveling our driveway is the fact that there isn't anywhere to put the snow after we get it on the shovels. So picture this, the entire snow-covered 6 foot wide driveway has to be cleared and the snow precariously balanced on the 2 foot border (which is used for a small garden in the spring) backed by the neighbor's wooden fence. I say precariously, as we don't want the snow to fall back onto the driveway as we go along. The driveway is also very long, so many times in this scenario, we just keep throwing the shoveled snow in front of us as we continue down the path, trying not to slip and fall on the underlying ice that refused to melt with the salt that was applied the night before. Eventually the border on one side gets wider, consisting of our "front lawn", a small 7X7 foot area that resides above a stone wall.

The real pain-in-the-keister is that at the end of the mile long drive, or so it seems at the time, there looms a 2 foot (at the very least) wall of thickly packed snow/ice/slush/mud and whatever else can be jam-packed in, generously left by the snickering snow plow drivers on their seemingly endless drive throughout the gray, sunless days and dark freezing nights, where the beautifully shaped, crystallized snowflakes fall and create this stinking mess after they land, multiply and solidify into one ginormous unit!

Thus, comes the dreaded task of breaking down this ugly unit into smaller ugly units so that we can haul them to the side without breaking our backs or having police officers drive by and remind us that we can't pitch them into the street. Duh ... You think?

This is why I have always said that snow should ONLY fall on grassy/dirt areas - not on roads, driveways, parking lots, sidewalks or any other paved areas, or for those who live in locales where the traveled road isn't paved.

And the humorous, better yet hilarious part of the whole situation ... Twenty minutes after the last three hours of laborious drudgery, while we are getting into our freshly brushed off ice-caked vehicle to go to our office cleaning jobs ... Our landlord appears from out of nowhere with a snow-blower in the back of his truck to ... Get this ... CLEAN THE DRIVEWAY FOR US!

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