AAAAUUUGH

The whole damned day was built around fargin’ snow. Wife gets up, heads out, I get a phone call a minute or two later: I’m outside, stuck. Go outside. Indeed: the car progressed exactly one yard on the street. A neighbor is helping her get out of a drift.

Mind you, the plows hadn’t come over night. I’m sure they were hard at work citywide ‘round the clock, but for some reason our neighborhood had escaped their ministrations. So the entire street – half of which is a steep hill – consisted of ruts, high hillocks ‘twixt the drifts, and slick ice underneath that. The only possible solution I could see: drive backwards all the way down the hill, hope to hell no one comes around the corner, do a 45-degree turn in reverse, then head down the parkway. At least that’s what I think my solution was. Didn’t turn out that way. The first job was dislodging the car.

“Don’t you have boots?” My wife asked. I was wearing tennis shoes and sweatpants.

“Can’t find them,” I said. True enough. They may have left on their own accord. Started walking for the border. Can’t blame them.

We got the car out, and managed to get down to the bottom of the hill without getting marooned in another drift. Well, we managed to avoid that twice; happened once. She tried to gun it to get up the hill, and failed halfway up. The snow was too thick under the car. This is the point where I toted up every fargin’ cent I pay in property taxes, and realized I would have to shovel the street.

I had to shovel the street.

So I shoveled the street. She’d gun it, make it up. Slide back. Shovel some more. Gun it, make it up. Time elapsed so far: about 45 minutes. The neighbor, who was done blowing his walk, offered the use of his snowthrower to do the street, because GOD KNOWS THE CITY CAN’T -

Oh, I’m sure there’s a reason; they have to declare a snow emergency and tow everything, because it wouldn’t make sense to plow before that, right? So the plow I saw doing the neighborhood the night before, four hours into the storm, may have been some crazed employee who’d hijacked a truck and decided to run it around for grins. (He didn’t do our street, though.) So I fired up the blower and was about to chew the hillocks, when I saw my wife turn up another street, gun it and go. It had been blocked at the top by a car, but that car was gone now. Up she went and over the crest.

“And she was never seen again,” I said to my neighbor.

Inside, feet to the fire. Thank heavens I’d written a blog entry already for the 10 AM deadline (these are self-imposed, but I try to keep to a schedule). Fired that one off. got a call; daughter’s friend. She was supposed to go meet a friend who’d moved away, and could we come earlier? Sure. Shower. In the car. The Element handles the snow much better, but it was still hands-and-knees until I got to the parkway. Picked up one of the girls on a sidestreet – nightmare. There had been some plowing at some point in human history, but it just created huge mountains on the corners, which cars had dislodged while attempting to turn. You meet another car coming your way, you’re all dead. You have to keep moving. You stop, that’s it. I made it back on a dry road, dropped off the kids, drove home – nearly every other side street had a low-slung underpowered car stuck as they tried to turn; on my street, a taxi was in a drift, with another car stuck in the opposite direction. Went around, did a backdoor run to my street, but as I turned going up a hill I felt the Element lose its purchase at the same time it lost its momentum, and I shouted OH NO YOU DO NOT DO THIS NOW. What followed was pure Plainsman winter-driving instinct, a series of forward-reverse-brake-floor it maneuvers that got me out and left me exultant, glowing with pride. SCREW YOU SNOW SCREW YOU. GO TO HELL SNOW HELL I SAY DIE.

But! I couldn’t turn on to my block. A car was becalmed. I headed up the hill to the watertower, then realized I was really in terra maligna: the people who live up here have alley access. They haven’t come down today. There were no tracks. Nothing. Well, fortune favors the brave; slid down the street, did a sharp 45 to get on my street, and got into my driveway with a controlled fishtail. Got out and swore like Captain Haddock.

Had lunch.

Wrote the rest of the afternoon, then repeated the above when I went to pick up my daughter. The streets still weren’t plowed.

Later in the evening I went out to see if the plows had been by and built the Wall of Boulders, as they are keen to do; no. But the plow that did the alley across the street had A) shoved an enormous wall of snow on the edge of my driveway, and B) created deep ruts that would make any normal vehicle hang. So I spit on my hands and got out the shovel and shoveled the streets again.

One note: when I passed my daughter’s school, there was a truck nimbly shaving the parking lot. Cleaned it down to the pavement. It was a private contractor. The school has a private contractor for snow removal.

There wasn’t even snow today.

Priorities, priorities.

Obigatory OH BUT IT’S PRETTY shots:

Now, a palate cleanser! Nothing like a Swede known for nautical songs singing a tale about the American West:

I snipped this earlier today during the sudden spasm of interest about Libya; it’s Gadaffi reassuring his people that he will bend to popular will and issue a standardized spelling of his name. Actually, no; he’s telling people he’s still in town. That’s not the interesting part. After the remarks the feed goes back to state TV. It’s always stuff like these with governments like this. Always the National Dancing.

Linkage: Comic Sins and 30s Mag ads. In both cases, cars. See you around. Unless you’re a plow.