Fierce the wind, the rolling boil

of white which slaps the house.

What did we do wrong?

Snow falling up,  this dance toward spring

that taunted us with warmth and sun before retreat.

Land of dunes white with peaks and smoke signals.

Announcement.

Winter wins again, advance the light portend a change.

1. The back steps are my extra refrigerator

2. I enjoy the January utility bill

3. I love watching icicles tear at my gutters

4. The line of salt on my boots reminds me of ocean waves.

5. I can wear every article of clothing I own.  All at once.

6. It’s fun to open those hand warmers in packages

7. The lawn mower doesn’t wake me up early in the morning

8. More space for us when the Snowbirds leave

9. You can’t lose sunglasses when you never wear them

10. Hair dries faster

What do you “love” about winter.  Please write in.

I intended to write an article about the health benefits of benevolence but snow got in the way.  Lots of it.  If you’re reading this from Central New York State, it probably got in the way of a few things for you too.

As with every task, I have my favorite tools for the job of snow shoveling.  I have my roof rake to bring down as much snow as I can so the icicles don’t imperil us at the back door and cause damage with ice dams to Natalie’s bedroom ceiling at the back of the house.

I have my “plow” shovel, the one I use to mostly push the snow in front of me.  This works best on the sidewalk in front of the house that has a slight incline.  However it’s a bear to stop periodically and lift away the snow that piles up.  The shovel itself is quite heavy and when you add snow it’s a back buster.

Then there’s my 15 year old lightweight aluminum shovel, the real old-fashioned kind.  That’s the one I use when I have to move snow out of the way and pushing it isn’t enough.  It’s rather crumbled up after all these years when more than one student driver in the family and perhaps even an experienced Mommy bumped into it repeatedly in the garage .

Lastly, I have my regular old garden shovel.  This is another heavy one but the blade is small enough to work on the four stairs at the back door, the same back door that gets icicles overhead which drip until the stairs turn round with ice and then I need a heavy sharp garden blade to break it all apart.

Determined to stay ahead of the snow buildup on the roof, I brought the roof rake with the 10 foot handle up to the second floor bedrooms, opened the windows and attempted to reach over my head and behind me to pull the snow from the roof down to the walkway below where I could do even more shoveling to get it out of the way.

I can only imagine how I looked from outside the house; this half woman half contortionist, only contortionists never look like it hurts.  In the circus they have a strained and permanent smile on their face when they fold themselves in half backward and twist 180 degrees but still you think because they do this every day it can’t really be as uncomfortable as it looks.  Me?  It hurts way worse.  I think I gave myself  scoliosis.

Here’s to a Syracuse winter finally living up to its billing.  Remember there are “transplants” who expect to get annihilated after telling people they’re moving to Syracuse and everyone asks if they are nuts.  It’s an El Nino year so we’re supposed to get off easy, but as of this weekend we’ve reached our 40 inches of snow which is normal for this point in the season.

If this keeps up we’ll be the Comeback Kid of Upstate Cities and we’ll keep that Golden Snowball award in Syracuse right where it belongs.  Never you mind we were in last place till this weekend with Buffalo, Rochester and even Albany ahead of us.  We were the tortoise and they were the hare but the tortoise gets ‘em in the end with consistency and determination and in Central New York we shovel four inches of consistency and determination each morning in January and February as sure as we pour the coffee.

Christian owes a debt of gratitude to our former Boarder Jenna who returned for the weekend from her new job in Boston and got snowed in with us.  The language that comes out of Jenna when she helps me shovel is much more pleasant than what comes out of Christian when I remind him allowance isn’t for nothing.  Thank you Jenna!

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