One of my bowling friends gave me a spontaneous hug this morning. "I'm so glad you retired and decided to join us!" she said.
"Me too!" I answered. "It's the best thing about retirement so far!"
Another of our bowling buddies raised her eyebrow skeptically.
"I said, so far," I laughed. "Give me some time; it's only my second year!"
We woke to a scrape, then the bleating of a backup alarm, followed by tires spinning on the ice. A moving van was stuck on the tight turn in the corner of the driveway outside our condo. The window on the landing gave us a front-row seat to the crew as they tried first to gun the engine, then to push on the truck's cab, neither to any avail.
The side of the trailer was stuck on an enormous mound of ice and snow at the edge of the drive, where residents had piled it while shoveling out their parking spaces. We winced when one of the men slid under the back and poured salt melt beneath the tire. "That'll get you killed," Heidi said. But his risk was without results. The van was wedged high enough on the embankment that the wheel was off the ground.
Next, they produced a crowbar and began chipping away at the pile. At last, one of the neighbors on that side of the complex came to the rescue with a snow shovel, and Heidi followed with our steel forged sidewalk scraper, the perfect tool to break through the ice.
The crew themselves produced some cardboard boxes to wedge beneath the tire, and a little while later, I saw the truck bump down once they had chiseled the ice from its purchase. With a little more shoveling, they were finally able to back the truck up, more than an hour after they had run aground.
The turn proved to be impossibly tight, however, so they backed the van all the way around the loop road that rings our complex until they could finally pull forward and drive down the entrance hill, rescheduling their call for another day.
"If it snows like they say it will," I told Heidi last week, "you won't go to school at all. Especially with a work day Friday. I'm calling it now."
Nailed it!
It's not often around here that we get the kind of snow we had Sunday, and that's a good thing. While the community we live in pays for a plow to clear the circular road around the complex and shovelers to do the sidewalks, residents are responsible for digging out their own cars. With no assigned parking, things can get ugly quickly if someone leaves the space they spent time and energy clearing, only to return and find it taken.
Having lived here for decades, it seems like we've seen a lot of mini-dramas unfold over winter parking, but we've seen a lot of neighborly gestures, too. Naturally, in a community of 186 condos, there has been a lot of turnover in residents over that time, and I'm struck by the markedly different vibes from storm to storm.
Some years have found everyone out together, shoveling out all the cars on our end. Other years we have witnessed people throwing their snow right in front of a car that hasn't been cleared off yet, doubling the work for that other resident. One recent change I've noticed is that at least two of the young men who live nearby have dug out their neighbors, for a price. These guys in their 20s, both of whom live with their moms, will only lend a hand if they are paid.
This year, too, I've noticed another trend. 🤨 Anecdotally, as I look out my window and see which neighbors are helping the community, it's all been middle-aged ladies, like us, carrying one small shovel of snow at a time to make room for others.
I spent part of my day yesterday resting up for snow removal and reading magazines online with my public library account, which turned out to be more than simply recreational. Aside from the interesting information I gained, my reading also spurred me to action. After enjoying a fascinating article about family Christmas celebrations in Montreal, I considered making plans to revisit that beautiful city. But then I remembered that Heidi's passport expired, and so I renewed it online before even turning the virtual page. It will be here in six weeks, and international travel plans will be back on the table.
Likewise, after reading a charming essay about another author's memories of making orange marmalade with his English granny, "The recipe is basically a ratio—2-to-3-to-6, fruit to sugar to water," he says, I was inspired to satisfy my hankering for a bit of the bitter spread by preserving the oranges I had and making a microbatch of Mrs. Barrenger's Marmalade. On homemade sourdough toast with a dollop of burrata, it was a delicious breakfast this morning, and fuel enough for all the shoveling we did today.
We weren't sure what to expect from the much-hyped impending snowstorm. Unlike many winter events around here, this time temperatures were predicted to stay well below freezing throughout the storm and into the next week. And yet, because of warmer air aloft, the snow was also forecast to turn to a wintry mix before ending, which would refreeze on the ground.
The result was a shower of tiny ice pellets that lasted throughout the day, leaving several inches of granular, almost sand-like snow that partially filled in footsteps as they were left. This unusual precipitation was pretty, but too cold to pack, hard to walk in, and heavy in the shovel. It was fun to slide down the hill on, though.
Whatever it is? Is still coming down out there, a little wetter now, with temps in the high 20s slated to fall to the teens after midnight. So who even knows what twe'll see in the morning?
I laughed when our cat Tibby bolted past me this morning into the bathroom as I came out. She dashed over to the water bowl we keep in the corner for the pets and nosed something indignantly. It seems I inadvertently swept a small bottle of ibuprofen off the counter while performing my morning ablutions, and Tibby wanted me to get it out of there.
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