Blowhard
Sunday, January 31, 2010 at 7:34PM A few words about snow blowers.... I hate them.
Seriously. They're noisy. They smell ghastly. They make my head explode.
We were supposed to get a dusting this weekend but the snow gods favored the kids again and dropped eight inches on the city. The tribe soaked themselves yesterday with hours of sledding and shoveling. Slept hard. Then woke up ready to head back out. They rushed through breakfast and ran straight to their rooms for tights and dresses and boots and pants and socks and layers and layers and ...
OH MY GOD. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TAKES TO SUIT UP FOUR LITTLE PEOPLE FOR THE SNOW?
Esme - dressed first - tapped her foot and hung dramatically from the door knob for what seemed like an hour. "I'm hot," she whined. "Come on."
She bleated. She sighed. She did not make things move faster.
Despite the lengthy pre-production, we assembled on the front sidewalk for Sledding and Shoveling: Part Two before the clocks hit 9.
A few words about snow... I adore the quiet stillness that settles on the city streets after it first falls.
That's what I expected to enjoy when we walked out the door. Maybe that, mixed with the rhythmic scraping of shovels as neighbors cleared their sidewalks.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Silence as the shoveler pauses to catch their breath. Stretch their back. Talk to a neighbor. Yell at their spouse. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
Instead, we found:
RRRRRWAAANNNNGGGGHHHH!
I looked up the street and saw a man I didn't recognize pushing a small contraption that belched tiny mounds of snow and spewed gas fumes as he walked back and forth a few houses away.
RRRRRWAAANNNNGGGGHHHH!
RRRRRWAAANNNNGGGGHHHH!
He finished that house then moved on to the next. I pulled my hat over my ears and tried not to throw fireballs with my eyes.
A few words about leaf blowers... I'm no fan of them either.
But snow blowers assault my brain like a mushroom cloud of incessant, deafening, maddening noise that blows out my eyes, incinerates my teeth and sends the top of my skull rocketing to the sky.
The man finished the second house and - OH NOOOOOO!!! - moved on to third. Slowly marching the stinky contraption closer to us each time.
A few words about where we live... we don't get a lot of snow.
I mean, eight inches is a pretty substantial haul for these parts. Some winters we're lucky to get a dusting. So, I'm wondering why someone would even buy a snow blower in the first place. Let alone use it.
The man finished the third house and God bless him, marched his blower across the street and started on a fourth. I've no doubt he eased the burden of a lot of neighbors. Saved them the backache and fatigue of a shoveling session. I wonder though, were any of them disappointed? Did anyone look forward to the work - as I do - only to find it done?
Anyway, when he marched on to the fifth house I couldn't fake indifference anymore. We marshaled the troops and pulled the sled in the opposite direction. Off to romp across the field and snack on treats at St. Elmo's.
A few words about our local coffee shop... I love it.
Reader Comments (3)
On Sunday morning, too? Where I come from, you don't dare work in your yard or do anything noisy until after noon on Sunday, at the earliest. Bleeeghh! Glad the coffeeshop rescued you.
Here's the big difference between a D.C. coffeeshop and a Raleigh one: Bet you didn't wonder for a second whether or not it would be closed down b/c of a few inches of snow. Happily for me, Helios was open at 9 this morning, and we made the girls wait for snow until we parents got a decent cup of coffee.
I too love to shovel snow! My favorite time is at night, when it's quiet & all you hear are the sounds of other shovelers. Now that I live in an apartment, I don't get that specific kind of "me" time I used to love so much when I shoveled. I miss it. Humph. Snow blowers.
OK, I have to be the voice of New England and give a shout-out of love for snow blowers (or snow THROWERS as many New Englanders call them, I've found). Since moving here a few years ago, I have come to love mine, as we regularly get dumped with 8-12 inches of snow at a time. I regularly wake to the "hum" of the snow blowers of my neighbors, and it alerts me to how much we have gotten, and that it has stopped snowing. Sometimes I have to go out mid snow storm and blow twice so the build up doesn't get too much. I hate shoveling now, even blow right across the grass to make a walkway up to my steps (much to the dismay of my husband). I LOVE my cherry red snowblower with it's head light and 3 forward speeds (2 reverse) and self-propelledness (I know it's not a word, but I still love it). I don't know what I'd do without it. But that's here in MA, not VA. And that makes it a different story I guess. But I still had to defend my beloved!