Survivor: Snowfall

If you were driving through my neighborhood this morning, you may have seen a woman clad in a magenta raincoat furiously shoveling snow. "Who is that crazy woman, and why in the world is she shoveling snow in the rain?" you may wonder as you carefully slid past.

Let me tell you. She is shoveling snow because she has heard the stories. If you don't shovel the snow immediately, it will melt and then refreeze into a sheet of ice. This last is always said with a verbal flourish implying all sorts of menace and doom. A sheet of ice! Yikes! Further, this sheet will last all winter because it will never completely thaw. If you make that first crucial mistake, you will be paying until springtime.

Well, this Texan wasn't going to make that mistake. Nosirree. This Texan was going to head out there no matter the weather and shovel that snow into submission.

As I started shoveling, I noticed irregular, very loud, dull thuds. Ahhhh...Large clumps of wet snow and ice were dropping from the very tall pines around me. Excellent. It was like playing a video game. Round 1: shovel snow before getting beaned by deadly snowballs. I felt like a Mario Kart character. All I needed was the tinny, synth music. If I got beaned by one of those snow/ice clods, would computer-generated stars circle around my concussed noggin?

Luckily, I never found out. Perhaps I should invest in a helmet? Now that would be a sight!

I noticed a couple of other things. One, I was the only person out there doing this. Two, where was I going to put the snow? It has to go somewhere. I started dumping the snow down the driveway, forming berms around the perimeter. Where my driveway met the snow, there were already little moguls of snow at the corners. Which begged another question: am I actually worsening the situation? Would these berms which would be more resistant to melting than a thinner layer of snow create future issues?

Well. No one to ask. And too late now.