January is National Soup Month and Sena made a smoked turkey soup in honor of the occasion. This is the counterbalance to the winter storm and blizzard warnings this month.
This morning we shoveled—and shoveled—and shoveled. It was the Sisyphean labor all over again, only this time with Winter Storm Gerri.
And then we went back out in the afternoon into the arctic dimension and shoveled some more. We could have just stayed out there until the blizzard warning took effect. As it was, we were out for an hour and a half, about to quit—and the city plow roared by and scraped a wall of snow boulders plug in our driveway. We had to stay out for an extra half hour. Thank you.
Anyway, during our morning break from shoveling, we got “near genius” level on a quiz about soups. Our answers were lucky guesses. How about a couple of turkey jokes?
Q: What’s the most musical part of a turkey? A: The drumstick.
Q: Why did the turkey refuse dessert? A: He was stuffed.
Soup wins! We were not so stuffed we couldn’t have cherry cobbler for dessert.
Okay, we got about 14 inches of snow from Winter Storm Finn, but that doesn’t begin to convey the human meaning of it.
I’m going to call digging out from all that snow a Sisyphean labor. You don’t hear that term much, but it means a chore that never seems to end while you’re doing it. The short story about Sisyphus comes from Greek mythology.
Sisyphus was the king of Corinth. Just to be clear, it generally doesn’t snow in Corinth. One day, King Sisyphus saw a splendid, mighty eagle carrying a beautiful maiden to a nearby island (where it also does not snow). A river god named Asopus told him that his daughter had been abducted, but not by extraterrestrials. Sisyphus suspected Zeus, who had never seen a snow shovel, if you can imagine that. Like a fool, Sisyphus asked Zeus to help him find her. Because Zeus hated nosy mortals who aren’t supposed to know what the boss god is up to, he banished Sisyphus to Hades where he had to roll a giant rock uphill which always rolled back downhill (Hamilton, Edith. 1942. Mythology. New York: Little Brown and Company).
Anybody who knows what it’s like to try to shovel walks and driveways during a horizontal snowstorm knows that for every shovelful of snow you remove, twice that amount refills the space you empty almost immediately. You’d have to stay out in the snowstorm forever to keep up. It’s the definition of a Sisyphean labor.
And that’s why Sena and I left about a third of our driveway uncleared last night because we were exhausted. We’d been out in that storm shoveling all day since early morning. We ached everywhere and didn’t have much to show for it.
This morning we were up early again, anticipating trying to clear the driveway and again shovel all the walks, the curb ramp, the trees and whatnot.
The driveway had been cleared, probably sometime during the night, by a good Samaritan we’ll probably never know for sure. We could tell by the telltale friction wheel tracks, and the perfectly circular mark of the machine’s turning radius. A path to our curbside mailbox had also been cleared.
We are grateful. The only big job left was to clear the curb ramp, across which was a hip high mountain range of snow left by the city plow. It was also blocked by a large pickup truck. The driver must have seen us and he hurried over from where he was working with a crew building a house. He was more than happy to move it—although I was not so happy when I found out how hard we had to work to clear the curb ramp. If you start from the top, the snow spreads out over the mountain. If you start from the bottom, the snow from the top falls down. I would call that Sisyphean labor.
Anyway, we’re waiting for the next disaster, which I think the meteorologists are calling Winter Storm Gerri. They’re promising 4 inches of new snow by Friday. It almost sounds like light duty.
Holy horizontal, heavy, wet, driving snow. At least you could make great snowballs for juggling! I got up around 4 in the morning to shovel. Sena came out a little later and we took shifts a couple of times. I still had to run back out again in the mid-afternoon to clear away what’s probably going to turn out to be better than a foot of snow.
The plows plugged our driveways whenever they felt like it. But we took a break so I could make the best snowballs ever and juggled them. I wore a balaclava which got all twisted on my head so that I ended up able to see out of just my right eye—the one I had surgery on for a torn retina.
We got walloped by that blizzard I mentioned yesterday. It left about 5-8 inches at least with a gift mountain about waist high on one side of our driveway left by one of the city plows. Later in the day another plow gifted us another driveway plug, not as tall but wetter and heavier.
This morning we shoveled hard and it must have showed. Three of our neighbors came over with their snow blowers to help dig us out. We were very grateful for their kindness. One of them must have been up before 5 AM to get started. Another powered her way through a good chunk of our driveway. Yet a third neighbor helped clear the gift mountain and more.
I think I may have got in the way a few times because I felt a little guilty about them doing so much work with their machines. I felt compelled to sneak in and scoop something because I felt terrible just standing there watching them.
In the afternoon we had to get back outside to clear the second driveway plug left by the second city plow. Our driveway had drifted in about to my hips. It took us a while to dig out.
Some have speculated about whether shovel people take unfair advantage of the generosity of snow blower people. After all, we tend to look kind of pathetic, so they probably take pity on us.
There might be an expectation in some neighborhoods for snow blower people to contribute to the community by being willing to go the extra mile and clear driveways for shovel people. I could find only one serious article on the internet about this, “Is There a Social Code for Snow Removal?” on the Scientific American web site.
I’ve not heard of shovel people coming to help snow blower people, but it happened this afternoon. After Sena and I cleared our snowdrifts, we visited the three neighbors who helped us this morning and scooped out their driveway snow plugs and a little more when we could.
This is just a brief announcement—a Kindness Alert. This past Saturday, we got our first load of snow of the season dumped on us, which meant we had to go out and shovel. Our driveway is pretty big. We don’t have a snowblower. This means we were out there about an hour and a half powering our way through a few inches of wet, heavy snow.
And naturally, that meant the city snowplows plugged in our driveway shortly after we went inside, foolishly congratulating ourselves on a job well done. I think there must be some kind of local ordinance requiring all driveways to be plugged with snow right after the homeowners finish clearing them. I’ve posted about this before.
But then as we watched from our front window, our neighbor interrupted his own snow removal work to clear off our driveway plug and then some. In fact, he used a snowblower and a shovel! He spent considerable time on the job. It was an impressive act of kindness. I remember wanting to rush out in the cold to thank him.
Little did I know that I would have the opportunity to return the favor. Shortly after our neighbor finished, another snow plow rumbled through and dumped more show in our driveway and even spread it around more generously in other places near the curb—and even shoved snow over the curb on the lawn. By that time, the stuff had frozen into small boulders of ice and mud.
I plodded outside again and cleaned it up. Then I noticed that the snowplow driver had also piled more snow on my neighbor’s side. In fact, I did return the favor—sooner than I thought I would.
A big shout-out for my neighbor’s act of kindness!
I sometimes wonder about etiquette. Take the sandwiches in the featured image today. Of course, you can’t actually “take” them; don’t be so literal. My wife, Sena made them for lunch yesterday, after we’d worked on clearing a lot of snow and ice from our driveway and sidewalks. We were ravenous.
Sena ate the neatly cut sandwich with her hands. I ate the messy one and you can see why it’s messier—I used a knife and fork.
I looked this up so there can’t be any dispute: it’s perfectly acceptable according to the rules of etiquette to eat a sandwich with knife and fork.
That said, there are questions about why there would be rules of etiquette about how to eat sandwiches in the first place. Without any research on it, I surmise it’s all about messiness.
Is it messier to have the condiments and contents of your sandwich smeared all over your plate or your face? You be the judge; but just so you know, since I’m writing this post, I’m the authority and I say you ought to keep your sandwich off your eyebrows and your earlobes in polite company.
This reminds me of other points of etiquette I’m often not sure about. What about coconut? I just happen to be one of the many souls who cannot stand the texture of shredded coconut. It’s like chewing pieces of paper. I just can’t bring myself to swallow it.
What do you do if you’ve discovered, too late, that you’ve just taken a mouthful of shredded coconut? What is the proper etiquette? You’ll be happy to learn that I have the answer although I didn’t do any research on the matter.
You should discreetly expectorate the papery mess on the left side of your dinner plate—without making any kind of noise as though you were hawking up a lunger. You’re welcome.
And what do you do with those beer bottles made by knuckleheads who think it’s clever to wrap paper around the neck all the way up over the cap which you can’t just twist off? You try your best to pop the top with a standard bottle opener and you can bet your bottom dollar a piece of paper will end up in your beer. It’s a small piece, just big enough to make you worry that you’ll choke on it like you would on a piece of shredded coconut.
Etiquette might say you should adroitly hold your bottle opener so that paper doesn’t end up floating in the foam. But you’ll have plenty of foam everywhere if you try to be adroit about it; trust me, I know. The bottle will slip, tip over, and smack the countertop which will lead to an eruption of suds all over the place, including you. No matter how hard I scrubbed and how much air freshener I sprayed in the kitchen, Sena called out from down the hallway in the front of the house, “Boy, sure smells like beer in here!”
You could just leave the paper in the bottle, which is the easiest. However, it’s pretty tough not to try to drink around it. Etiquette doesn’t cover that, probably because there is no way to gracefully drip beer from your chin.
Moving on to another point about etiquette although not involving food, let’s get back to shoveling snow, which we did an awful lot of yesterday.
We don’t own a snow blower, even though we live in Iowa, which gets a fair amount of snow. Yesterday morning we woke up to about 5-6 inches (not counting the driveway plug, courtesy of the city plow) of heavy snow and ice. We got out there and I was poised to plunge my ergonomic shovel in the plug when the neighbor across the street walked over and shouted over the roar of his snow blower, telling me he would be happy to let me use it. He offered more than once, pointing out that he was already finished clearing his driveway.
It was tempting. We usually spend about 2-3 hours shoveling after a heavy snow. On the other hand, I had no idea how to operate a snow blower. What would etiquette say about how to respond to repeated offers from a friendly neighbor to allow me to borrow his?
I could have just said “OK” and borrowed it. The only problem with that is I would then demonstrate my total ignorance about the machine. I would probably have the augur cranked down too low and sent spears of shattered driveway into his chest (I’m sure he would stand out there and watch me). How about rotating the chute so that the snow and ice hits me in the face? What does etiquette have to say about that? That’s probably more about first aid and the emergency room than etiquette.
On the other hand, I couldn’t let him know I didn’t know how operate a snow blower. Etiquette amongst guys is clear on that point. I would have had to turn in my man card. So, I did the only thing I could, which was to politely decline the offer, “I appreciate you so much, but I do this mainly for the exercise!”
Then I would proceed to throw my ergonomic shovel into the drifts, twist and hurl the load of snow clumps that were more like stones over my shoulder and slam the shovel into the drift in order to make an impressive show of the proper technique for removing the frozen residue from the inside of the shovel. I paid dearly for that later.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts about etiquette. It’s time for blueberry tartlets. Etiquette clearly allows eating them with a shovel.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 