What it's like: the snowy driveway edition

[mrissa]

Dear Newspaper Deliverers,

Thank you. Thank the hell out of you. By driving up and down our driveway -- by making multiple tries at it when you failed -- you have created a compacted layer of snow just at the steepest, most difficult part. Chipping away at this for the last hour has availed me very little.

Nolove,
mrissaI want to amend what I said

Comments

[ex_truepenn]

I wish whole-heartedly that your body would not do this sort of thing to you. That said, however, I am glad you did not hurt yourself badly.

[songwind]

*hugs* I hate it when other people do thoughtless crap that makes life hard.

Because I'm a man with an engineering background, I am incapable of not offering suggestions. :) We have a tool that looks like a hoe, but with the head on straight instead of bent. It also has a nice rake-or-spade-length handle for good leverage. It makes ice/packed snow removal much simpler. If you don't have something like that, I heatily endorse it. Maybe if you could confound the forces of snowiness faster you would have less opportunities to fall.

I like my mrissa time, but prefer to not get it in hospitals.

[jhetley]

I have an old ice chisel from the times before augers created ice-fishing holes. It's a heavy chisel welded to the end of a steel pipe, and it works wonders on even 2" of ice-storm residue.

[ksumnersmith]

I'd be frightened of Mrissa using such a thing for her ice, though. Falling on a heavy chisel welded to the end of a steel pipe seems like it would be ... unpleasant. (But I wouldn't mind having such a thing to help me chip away the ice pile from behind my car this evening ...)

[jhetley]

Well, that iron pipe puts the sharp edge about seven feet away from you. Generally deployed in a sliding motion, wedging in under the ice and lifting, although you can lift and drop it straight down on particularly recalcitrant areas. Considerable momentum.

[jhetley]

People who drive on other folks' unplowed driveways...

Well, there's a special place in Hell for them. The icy Mongolian type of Hell.

[dichroic]

I have a strained ligament at the moment. I am walking with a cane in hopes less pressure on the foot will help it heal faster. It would probably heal faster if I stopped walking on it altogether, but I have things to do and places to walk to and entire *countries* to travel between. (Not that I have to walk between countries, just that airports generally demand lots of walking

[eposia]

I second the suggestion! Just because we CAN handle everything, doesn't mean we should all the time. Not that I would know, from personal experience or stubbornness or anything. *stares off*

[crimini]

And if you can't find said Minnesotan, maybe a snowblower? Something electric so it's not so crazy noisy. My dad had one and it worked great for him.

[mrissa]

So here's the thing: my strong young man is named markgritter. He is here at least 25 out of every 30 days, and this year it's been more like 35 out of 40 or 45 out of 50. So the number of days on which there is not enough snow for the driveway service and markgritter is not home to do it -- and timprov is having a bad day/week/fortnight in terms of his health -- are really, really small in number.