S'NO day.

First off, a shout out to Jenn for teaching me how to revamp my blog. Thanks so much, Jenn!

Okay then, oy vey! What a few days it has been. You might have heard that some snow fell in the midwest, yes? Yeah, well, 10 inches fell on us here in Indy. The kids are tickled pink. My fingers and toes are blue. I'm not sittin' on the better end of this deal, y'understand.

So yesterday morning, I'm all snuggly warm and sound asleep in my bed when, "Tone. TONE! I'm stuck!" It was dh waking me from the land of nod. His tone was quasi-frantic. My eyeballs were quasi deer in headlights.
"Whaa???" I rubbed my burning eyes.
"I'm stuck. STUUUCK!" He added some drama to snap me out of my sleepy stupor.
"Stuck WHERE?" I added some drama to tell him to BACK OFF! WIFE NOT FULLY
CONSCIOUS!
"In the road. It snowed all night and the truck is stuck in the road."

ZAP! Fully awake now.

I stumbled out of bed, cursing the cold and the task at hand. "I'll see if I can help you get un-stuck." Now the next guy might have laughed at my "I'll fix this" attitude. But dh knows me. He knows he married a hard headed, "I can do anything, even if it kills me" Polish girl. I was dressed and on board as #2 of our 2-person crew in no time.

Outside to the drive.
Bitter cold hit my exposed face.
Truck in the road.
Stuck reeeeeal good.
What to do?

Well, we got our best version of Dr. Doolittle goin', what with the PUSH ME/PULL YA that followed. It seemed as though we were destined to remain stuck in the street, which would have also stuck every neighbor on our cul-de-sac as they would have needed to get past our stuck truck. See the picture here? She aint pretty. Thankfully, 5 minutes of push me/pull ya and we were able to get the truck back in the drive.

But that's as far as it would go. Our drive has quite a deep slope to it and Lil' Ranger had no intention of making it back into the garage.
I tried and tried and tried, but all I heard was, "I think I can't. I think I can't. I think I can't."
The Lil' Ranger That Couldn't.
Hmmmf!

So dh hopped in the van and was on his way.
An hour late for work.
Swell!

Meanwhile, back at Mt. Snowfall, I was left with the job of shoveling out the rest of the drive. And it was coming down like the dickens, I tell you. By now, our wheel spinning drama had awakened several other neighbors who realized they too had better get to shoveling. You're welcome. You're ALL welcome. Thanks to us, you'll all be on time for work today. Care to put a quarter in the unemployed man's hat? I'm just sayin'.

So as I was shoveling along (and keep in mind, it's not even 6 o'clock in the morning here), I hear some serious drama over the pffft pffft pffft of snow flying off the end of my shovel. Wh'sat???
I stopped for a better listen.
Okay, nice. A neighbor across the street is fit to be tied. His wife is cackling out the door, loud as you please, about what time they need to be on their way. And how does he respond to her snow day demands? Why, fire the "F" bombs of course. So he fires. And fires. And fires. And I'm all, "Would now be a good time to sing, "This little light-o-mine?" Probably not. I was definitely tempted to at least humm a bit of Kumbaya.

When I finally finished shoveling and came inside, it was 6:30am. Too late too go back to sleep. Waaaay too early to wake my kids for homeschool. Oh yeah, you heard that right. My kids still had school yesterday. I am merciless when it comes to snow days. My kids don't get 'em, and it hasn't yet occurred to them that others do. While you might think that's awful, at least I didn't make them go to school on Christmas Day (like I did last year, but it's a long story).

So I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down to watch the news. That's when I realized I might have depleted some potassium, what with my fingers feeling "jumpy" and my eyebrow twitching at random. Banana to the rescue.

The snow continued most of the morning, which was quite disheartening as I knew it spelled "second shovel" for me and my potassium depleted self. Sure enough, I found myself again shoveling mid-afternoon. It occurred to me sometime during the day that our street was not plowed. That dh was stuck not in our drive but in our street. That cars were getting stuck in our cul-de-sac and having difficulty getting out.
That no plowing had occurred before dh woke for work.
No mid-morning plow.
No plow at noon.
No mid-afternoon plow.
And now, here I was, shoveling a second time due to continued snow and still no plow. Uh,...we pay for snow removal with homeowner association fees. Only, there has been no removal. That is, until my postman informed me that "the rest of the streets in your development were plowed. Why is your street still covered?"

That did it. NOT happy! My dh was an hour late for work, I had to literally shovel the ROAD in front of my drive to guarentee that he would be able to get back in when he got home, and now I learn that we were the only street not plowed.

555-1212.

"This is Toni H. on Not-so-happy drive. I would like to know what the particulars of the snow removal contract are for our development. We don't get tons of snow that would require a plow to come through. Yet, today we have 10 INCHES sitting out there and we have yet to see a plow. It's now 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I've watched several cars get stuck in our cul-de-sac. Please call the service you've contracted with and get a plow out here this evening. Thank you!"

Lo and behold, the plow came through a half hour later. Better late than never, right? Grrrr!

As I type this, I am offically the poster child for side effects of Ibuprofin. Every muscle in my mid to lower back is hurting. My forearms ache. My upper back feels surprisingly good and my Scoliosis is actually not bothering me. Just lots and lots of muscle pain. I dang well better see a plow down this street in a timely manner next time.
"Next" time.
As if 10 inches falls every day, right?
I might as well face it. This much snow is a rare occurance and we got hosed in the midst of it.
I guess we're just lucky like that.

Toni