Take me with your shovel and we'll bury all your troubles. . .

February 26, 2011


Right now I should be at the Empire Theater Saturday afternoon at the Met production of Iphigénie en Tauride.

But I'm not.

Instead, I am at home, blogging, eating leftover chicken and brown rice and listening to the third episode of the third season of the British program Primeval, before going to the nursing home for an afternoon visit with my Mum.

Around 3.00.

After she finishes bingo.

Because if I was to interrupt bingo, I would be in deep doo doo.






I am thrilled to go to see my Mum.

But how come the afternoon you ask?

Because we have been invited out for dinner at a friend's house and Stephen accepted for us.

I don't mind going out for dinner, but I like my Saturday evening dinner visits with Mum.

As it is with being sick twice in one month, I've missed more Saturday visits than I think is appropriate.

So I'll go this afternoon and stay with her until supper time and then we'll go out for dinner.

Again, another example of how I am a creature of habit and perhaps should seek therapy for my discomfort when confronted with changes to my routine.






I love family activities. 

Board games, movie nights, driveway shoveling.

Yes, driveway shoveling.

While we sat inside the warm, coziness of our living room last evening, I made it very clear that the last time I shoveled the driveway alone was indeed THE last time I shoveled the driveway alone.

It took me two hours to shovel it properly, and there wasn't half as much snow as there was last night.

So this morning when I awoke, I looked outside at the piles and piles and piles of gleaming white snow and chuckled inwardly at the knowledge that when my children opened their little eyes and emerged from their cavern-like bedrooms, they would be greeted with the cheery reminder that they would indeed be helping shoveling the driveway.

Whether they wanted to or not.

It was absolutely joyous being outside together, watching four shovels pushing snow this way and that, hither and yon at a speed so rapid I paused for a minute just to bask in such industry.

How quickly people move when they're outside doing something they don't want to do.

And it's cold.

As a reward for her labours, once the driveway was cleared and the car was free of its snowy burden, Emily was allowed to drive the car.

Em wants her licence.

But she doesn't want to take Driver's Ed.

I don't know if she has to or how much insurance would cost if she didn't, so I'll have to make inquiries on Monday.

Imagine having another driver in the house.

Makes me all tingly inside, really. 



Title Lyric: Shovel by Katie Herzig