The spousal unit's mom lives for the winter storm warnings. I'm serious. The woman loves to wind herself up anytime the forecast is for anything more than six inches of white & fluffy stuff, so you can well imagine her glee when the weatherman said a big Nor'easter was headed our way overnight.

"We could have two feet of snow," she solemnly told the spousal unit last night. She spent many minutes fretting over whether or not she has enough food on hand. This is the woman who has enough food in her cupboards and freezer to see her and her three sons and their partners, her five grandchildren and her two great-grandchildren through a nuclear winter.

I sweartogawd, squirrels stand up to attention and throw her a snappy salute any time my mom-in-law walks by. They recognize The Queen of the Food Hoarders when they see her.

Part of the Winter Storm Warning experience for my mom-in-law is to uh Imagine Worst Case Scenarios which is a polite way of saying she has been known to exaggerate projected snowfalls, so when the phone call ended the spousal unit and I checked Yahoo Weather. They predicted between a foot and 18 inches for where we live.

Two feet of snow. Pfffffffffft. There was much cackling over the mother-in-law's imagination.

So we woke up this morning and as we expected there wasn't two feet of snow. Nope. It was closer to 2 1/2 feet of snow. SHUT UP. Not A Word. Technically, We Were Right.

Because we were so smug in our assumption that there would not be a buttload of snow dumped on our heads overnight, we did not bother to clear the first six inches of snow off our front step before we went to bed. After all, six inches of snow is not a big deal. But the thing is, 2 1/2 feet of snow weighs a lot. It weighs so much that we could not push our front door open more than a few inches.

For a few minutes the spousal unit and I contemplated which ground floor window we would have to crawl out of to get outside so we could shovel our door free. SHUT UP. Not A Word.

Desperation is the Mother of Invention. The two of us managed to push the front door open a few inches and I edged our dust pan through the crack, using it as a scoop to clear away bits of snow. Painfully, fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch, I cleared away enough snow to start working my arm towards the front of the door. Dustpan by dustpan, I flicked away enough snow to get the door open wide enough to just squeeze outside. SHUT UP. Not A Word.

Down at the home farm there is a big tractor with a snow blower which the spousal unit uses to clear his mom's yard, drive and the area in front of the garage down on the main road where I leave my car all winter. We don't bother clearing the road to our house because we own a snowmobile. Snowmobiles are designed for the snow. Right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

When faced with over 2 1/2 feet of white, soft, fluffy powdery snow a snowmobile digs itself down and refuses to budge. I can tell you from personal experience that no matter how much a fifty-something man or a fifty-something woman might curse at it, the snowmobile just parks its butt firmly in powder snow and waits for someone to dig it out.

One of the chores I do for my household and my mom-in-law's is snow shovelling. A tractor and snowblower can only get so close to garages, patios and decks. Because we don't clear our yard, we have to have footpaths between our home and our outbuildings. A lot of snow has to be moved by hand. It's great exercise and because I can do it at my own pace, I don't mind it at all. There is one exception to this, however, and this would be when I am required to shovel a path for a freaking SNOWMOBILE.

You know, the machine that's SUPPOSED to ride on the snow. The machine you see in ads jumping huge snowbanks in a single bound. Yeah, that machine. You would be amazed at the richness and depth of the cursing vocabulary that can be directed at a rather expensive yellow machine that does not do what it's supposed to do.

Once I broke a path for it to a steep part of our road, the machine managed to make it all the way down to my mom-in-laws with a big assist from gravity. Had it not, there's no telling what might have happened. Fortunately, Canada has very tight gun control laws, so I do not have recourse to armaments.

After all that, I only had enough steam to get half the snow shovelled off our old woodshed roof. One side remains. Our old woodshed roof is a testament to our architectural and engineering abilities. Despite living in snow country surrounded by endless examples of buildings with roofs steep enough to shed snow, we managed to build a woodshed with a roof that is not steep enough to shed snow.

Ah, but wait, it gets better. Somehow, we managed to create a roof with an angle not steep enough to shed snow but exactly steep enough that the person shovelling snow off it constantly has to fight not to slide off said roof.

Not everyone could do that.

So tomorrow I have to shovel the south side of the woodshed roof. Oh happy day. Even better?

It hasn't stopped snowing yet.

Those pretty little gym muscles of mine are moaning softly right now. Tomorrow? I predict by this time tomorrow they're going to be screaming.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 540.61 miles (857.9 kilometers)
met goal Nov. 7

Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers