UNCLE!

I have said -- more than once -- that I would shovel the drive myself as long as I could, thinking that I meant this year.. next year... until my body cried ENOUGH.

Instead, it only took until yesterday for us to get a plow guy. The wind-drive snow packed the driveway full -- again -- of stuff that was best cut out in blocks. But being newbies to the land to massively wind-driven snow (I guess the Maine stuff does have a bit more water in it that the powder that used to blow for miles across the western Colorado prairies) neither of us realized how solid it was when I got read to head for work yesterday afternoon.

K, eyeballing the depth on the drive, decided it would be best if he drove me to work and picked me up again and made it about 1/4 way down the drive before getting the Subaru "4-wheel-drive-stuck". We shoveled... around... under to the extent that we could (the damn spade has disappeared, Gods only know where) and in the end when I went to call in to work I asked if the happened to have the number for one of my co-workers, whose husband plows.

I guess that was what was supposed to happen, as he -- uncharacteristically, especially since she was not on the schedule yesterday -- was in the store's parking lot. They determined that he didn't have anything else to do, and directed him north to our place. At first even his truck was not able to make much headway on the filled drive. He got out the snow blower, worked a bit and then returned to his truck and managed -- slamming it with great vigor into the solidly packed snow -- to take bites out to clear the path. I shoveled from the car forward, cutting out and throwing block of snow that made me think building an igloo might be a plan for the next day off. Once he got back to the car, he used his spade and some of the bag of kitty litter I had brought from the house, to help dig me loose and give a bit of traction under the wheels to get me going.

I headed off to work -- only 32 minutes late -- and he stayed to clear the rest of the drive. In the end he only wanted to charge us $20 but K wrote him a check for $30 and retained him as our plow guy.

On other fronts, I was really feeling the turn of the tide yesterday, as I felt pushed to (finally) empty the last boxes of office stuff that had been kicking around the office, to sort and prepare the things that needed to go back into the garage for storage and to add to the Goodwill pile. I need to get the bulletin board in from the garage and there are still some piles and un-labeled files (the contents of some of which will go to the big filing cabinet in the garage, to join existing files, hence the lack of labels) but that will be tended to on the next pass.

I was prompted this morning while pouring my first cup of coffee, to continue on through the house. I need to do some work on the Craft room and living room next -- the former to make it ready for the New Moon tomorrow. This will be a busy week, as I have only full days on the schedule at the store (yesterday was a short day, starting at 4) and this week is an "on and off" week, wherein I will be off on Tu, Th and Sat. I do intend to talk to the boss next time I run into him and the opportunity presents to let him know that unless there is some good reason on his part, he need not give me random weekend days off... My understanding was that I was hired for "nights and weekends" and won't feel slighted or put upon if I work "every" friday, saturday or Sunday, unless I request a day, which will be rarely.

So now I better get at it, eh?