Now THIS is Snow!

My last foray into shoveling was done on the merest excuse, as a way to make up for my laggardly way with a recycling tote. Today, however, I woke to actual snow. It's hard to describe for a desert rat like me with relatively limited experience with the stuff. But today's snow is the kind of snow that Hollywood has been using in Christmas movies for decades: just heavy enough to fall straight, but much lighter than it looks, silent, gentle, packing together at the merest touch, and so fun to watch that you hardly notice that it's cold. The Platonic ideal of snow. It took a good deal of character not to simply jump into a pile and romp around, to build a snowman or make a snow angel, and I still haven't ruled it out.

But this is where shoveling is actually a pain. Because unlike last time, where I was dealing with a thin layer of slush and sort of pushing it around like peas on a plate, there's actual heft to this, and I had to actually pile it up, one shovelful at a time, and although it didn't weigh much, you do start to notice how little room a single shovel fills up, and how vast an acreage the front of a building can be. I also started worrying that I was overpiling the stuff. What about the poor slob who has to get into their streetside vehicle? They'll practically have to vault over the wall of my little impromptu fort. That, I suppose, is another way New York has of punishing you for the temerity of owning a car.

I'm a little embarrassed to show the work I did, but please bear in mind that it was intended to be a sort of half-assed temporary job. I have four hours to tidy up after the snow stops falling, and the snow was still falling in earnest when I came back inside. So this was just designed, really, to keep the walk tidy enough to not inconvenience my fellow pedestrians, and also--I must admit--to give me an excuse to play in the snow in a responsible and (sadly) snow-destroying manner. Anyway, here's how I left things:

I'm about to take off for a local Starbucks in an attempt to get actual writing done--I never use the wi-fi at Starbucks, so it's the one place I'm certain I can work without being distracted by the Internet. But since I might be gone for a while, I figured I'd better shovel first. That ought to give me four hours plus to work in. More soon.