For the last few days we’ve been more or less housebound. And not necessarily just because of the “Winter Blast”. Let’s face it, I’m from Klamath Falls. I can handle my snow. However, everything else in the world has shut down, so we really just have no where to go, and nothing to do.

So today, I was going a little stir-crazy and decided I needed a little exercise. And truly, there’s little better in the exercise department in the middle of a snow storm than shoveling snow! Sounded to me like a great idea – until I remembered we live in Portland… where we never get snow. At least not any snow that hangs around long enough to worry about shoveling. So, for that reason, we do not own a snow shovel.

Not to worry, a quick trip to Fred Meyer should be able to fix that (assuming they have any left in stock). Alas, my trip was not as fruitful as I would have liked. It was cut short when I was called back to the Playland early to pick up Mylie for a bathroom break (even though I’d specifically had her use the restroom before I dropped her off). By that time, there wouldn’t be enough time to bring her back and continue shopping before the attendant left on a lunch break, so I just signed her out. We were headed down the hallway to the restroom when I turned around to see Mylie, with her pants and underwear around her ankles, bending down with her little bum hanging out for all the world to see. When I yelled at calmly asked her to pull her pants up, she began screaming at me that she had to check and see if there was poopy on her panties. I tried to grab her pants and pull them up, but this enraged her even more. I was finally able to drag her naked bum into the restroom (with Nolan in tow), and tried to explain to her that we don’t pull our pants down in the middle of the store. She gave me a blank stare and just kept telling me “but I had to see if there was poopy in my panties,” like that explained everything, and why didn’t I get it? She also refused to sit on the toilet.

So, I know when to cut my losses. I thought it was safer for all of us to just head home immediately. I didn’t even return the clothes I had in my cart to the rack or any employee… I just left it all sitting outside the restroom. I got home, put the kids to bed, and got the groceries put away.

But I was still left with the quandary of how to shovel my driveway without a shovel. There was a good 3+ inches piled up from the last few days of snow and ice, and some of it had been packed down and frozen. I kicked into Odyssey of the Mind Brainstorming Mode, and searched my garage for a solution. Yes, folks, I shoveled my driveway with a push broom and a garden shovel. Okay, so it’s no MacGyver solution, but it actually worked out much better than I thought. And boy did my abs and arms get a great workout. And after just an hour and a half and a little rock salt, my driveway is pretty clean.

Of course, no sooner was I done that a group of teenage boys across the street came out to do their driveway with a bunch of big-boy snow shovels. And then they had the nerve to ask me if they could use my snow to build a snow fort. I let them of course, but I gave them crap for waiting to ask me until after it was all shoveled into neat little piles for them. They could have come and done it for me!

I didn’t think to take any before and after pictures of my little adventure in snow-shoveling, however, because I hadn’t anticipated blogging about the whole adventure until I was alone in my driveway with my blog-a-logue (the monologue that plays in your head when you think, “Hey, I could blog about this!”). But trust me, it looked good.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.