Dankel Family Blog: Snowed in...literally

First off, I have no idea how much snow we actually got. I would estimate between 18-24". It's so hard to tell b/c of all the drifting. All of our doors were literally snowed in this morning. I had to open the door from our garage into our backyard, push the snow out of the way, and then proceed to shovel a path for our dogs. Some of the drifts were humungous. I then needed to get to the front of the house...hmmm...how do I get to the front of the house. I was scared to open the garage w/o knowing how much snow was against it, so I waded through the yard (this is the perfect word to describe it), and then I tried to clear an area to be able to open our gate. Wasn't happening, so I had to climb over the chain link fence. I got up okay, and then I jumped down, and guess what? My coat got hung up on the post. Thankfully the snow was so deep and hard b/c I was tall enough to just slip it up and over the post. At first I thought I would be dangling there forever. Then I waded along the side of the house, and discovered a 4 ft drift against the garage door. I proceeded to dig out the door, then I continued to remove snow to my car and around it. So far it had been tiring and hard, but I was surviving by taking it off in layers. Then I got to the hard part. Moving all the snow from the lower half of the driveway. I never even made a whole line to my street, but was making some progress. It was grueling work. I was just about to quit when my neighbor across the street came over and used his snowblower while I continued to shove. We made quick work of the third of the driveway or so that was left. Let me just go back a bit in the story. I had never spoken to this neighbor before this morning. He called out to me while he was shoveling away what he had blown off of his own driveway. He wanted to know where my husband was. I told him Scott had had surgery. He said, isn't that convenient. He asked me where I was from, yada, yada, yada. I continued to shovel and he went back to snowblowing his driveway. Anyway, about 15 minutes later he's snowblowing up from the street into my driveway. I could have stopped and sang the Hallelujiah chorus right then and there. It gave me motivation to keep on shoveling. We could thankfully get out in case of an emergency.

Here is a pic Scott snapped of me hard at work (I didn't know I was being photographed).

This pile/drift is literally as tall as I am once I get down to concrete level.

Did you know shoveling snow could be such glamourous work? I had on 2 pair of pants and my rain boots b/c my snowboots weren't high enough for all this snow. I was wearing Scott's hat and scarf b/c I'd worn mine yesterday, and they were still wet. His hat kept slipping in my eyes. It was very annoying. My hair was frozen in front of my face, so that was equally annoying. In the back left, you can just see my neighbor's snow blower that proved to be a Godsend. In case you are wondering, I was the only woman out shoveling. Well, I was the only person shoveling w/o a blower as well.

It took me about an hour to do all of this. I was frozen by the time I came in.

Fast forward a few hours. After lunch crutch man offered to take C outside. What was he thinking. He proves to do dumber things by the minute. He shoveled out back once last night against my advice. I had already done it once before, but our dogs had no where to go again w/all the drifting.

sorry for the glare from the window. he is literally not putting weight on his left leg--and he clears snow twice as fast as me.

making his way back

Sorry, back to the convoluted storyline

He took C outside for some fun. I shudder to admit I haven't taken C outside since before Xmas. Sarah and Mitch had him outside the day after Xmas, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't been outside since then. I hate the cold weather, and he doesn't usually love it either.