Go forth and be nasty

As much as I like the idea of karma, I'm not sure I could ever be persuaded to believe in it, at least not the "instant" kind to which so many of my friends make reference.

For example, I don't think cussing out, or otherwise failing to appreciate one's sister, will cause her to fall dead from a heart attack or a brain-bleed within the month. In fact, I believe that notion is silly, so silly that I will continue to cuss out my sister when she requires it and if her heart stops or her brain bursts I will surely miss her but I won't feel bad for telling her what's up when she needed to know what's up. Not that I'm mad at my sister. We're actually getting along fairly well now that we have Mom to complain about.

If Mom's heart stops or if her brain bursts, it won't be because Alice and I vented about her.

I also don't believe that the very first time I gave the city plow driver the finger for dumping a three feet by ten feet by eight inches swath of extra-heavy plowturd at the end of my driveway just as Id finished up the shoveling has anything to do with the fact that the city plow driver now always deposits such a swath whenever I've just finished up the shoveling.

I've always assumed that if the driver saw my mitten-clad bird in his rear view mirror, he would understand the sentiment of my communication: cleaning up snow sucks and you're making it harder and I do not appreciate it. I have never considered that perhaps he was not raised as I was raised, raised to curse what interferes with you and expect that nobody will take it personally, or at least not for very long. Perhaps I should reconsider this and adjust my ways, but ... no. No, I do not want to do that right now.

Nor do I want to consider that the driver might laugh every time he sees my mitten-clad bird, and then laugh some more as he drives on imagining me, back in the house, red-faced and cursing at MrZ, whom he's never even seen so how could he know about him, for failing once again to buy me a snowblower for Christmas rather than a mod silk scarf and a raku elephant I surely would have died without. I just don't think about these things and putting it in print, on my seldom-visited blog, proves it.

This morning, after a day and a half of regretful procrastination having nothing to do with too much vodka and everything to do with temperatures in the teens, I went to the driveway with my trusty lightweight, straight-handled snow shovel. A gift from MrZ, purchased at K-Mart, my shovel has an admirably forest-green colored hard plastic scoop with a metal strip along its business-edge. I love this shovel because it weighs nothing which saves my back when the snow is heavy. I hate this shovel because it weighs nothing and will bend until it breaks when the snow is heavier.

I heaved a terminal sigh, said, "fuck it all to hell anyway," and I started, as is my new-this-season custom, in the middle.

We have too many cars and not enough crap-filled-anyway garages so I have to sort of sculpt my way around vehicles as I clear the snow from the concrete drive. I rather enjoy this new complication; it fuels my incurable need to shovel the snow better than anyone else could possibly shovel it.

Down to the concrete; corners sharp, edges crisp, curves defined: bliss. Seriously.

I dig around the cars first, depositing the snow between and on the other side of them. Because of how the cars are parked, depositing the snow on the other side of them is the only way I can make sure to dump a truly unreasonable amount of snow close to the property line I share with The Neighbor Who Frightens Me. She never shovels, by the way; she has a husbandy-type thing for that. And her husbandy-type thing keeps her sump-pump running in the springtime. My husbandy-type thing is in freakin' BORDEAUX, FRANCE right now and god knows where he'll be in the springtime, so sue me for leaning a little on someone else's husbandy-type thing. Gosh!

After digging around the cars, I usually dig the top of the driveway, the end closest to the garage, the door of which is currently in the UP position because MrZ backed into it last week, failing to check its position before putting his car into Reverse. Today, though, I could see that the swath of plowturd was exceptionally long, wide, and deep; therefore, I chose to work on the bottom half first and deal with the easier, lighter, shallower top-half after a glass of water, a cigarette, a slab of red meat, another cigarette, a soak in the jacuzzi, another cigarette, a nice long nap, and one more cigarette. That was the plan, anyway.

I still have not done the top half.

Miraculously, it was not a heart attack or stroke that diverted me from following my plan to the letter. It was the city plow driver.

In a fit of wild spontaneity the likes of which you have never seen from such a methodical snow shoveler, I took a break from the bottom of the drive when I had only a three-foot strip left there to do, and I started digging out the mailbox. If I don't dig out the mailbox, my postal carrier leaves me nasty messages, and then I feel bad and have to leave him presents, like gift certificates for fancy frankfurters and chi-chi coffees and such, and that would only irritate the husbandy-type thing that gives me scarves and knick-knacks instead of ginormously expensive snowblowers and chainsaws and three more garages for Christmas.

So, I was down there by the mailbox feeling ecstatic because the extra-thick crusty crud was coming up in huge, two-inch thick garbage can lid-sized pieces. I could not lift these frozen slush-slabs with my featherweight shovel; I had to bend down and grab them, then hurl them over the snowbank toward the property of The Neighbor Who Frightens me. It was big fun, but I was glad that I was unable to find my favorite recycled wool mittens this morning because it was also dirty fun!

I was wearing my loathsome, not-at-all warm, nasty brown, falling apart, pseudo-leather K-Mart gloves. And there, at the end of my road, I noticed the very large, very yellow, very rumbly, city plow truck.

It was headed in my direction.

I paused to consider the possible consequences of communicating with the driver. It's one thing to be given the mitten-clad finger, especially when the mittens are super-pretty and smartly fabricated from discarded woolen sweaters. It's quite another to receive a nasty brown ugly fake leather gloved finger.

So, I retreated.

I ambled as far back as the closest car's bumper. Oddly enough, the plow did not whiz by at 40 miles per hour, but approached slowly, at about 4mph. As the plow drew near, I pretended to examine the now bent handle of my super-cheap, not-gonna-make-it-to-February shovel. Eye contact with the plow driver, I felt, would be inadvisable. Also, if the driver was going to throw plowturds in my direction, my eyes should be averted as a safety precaution.

Believe it or not, the plow truck stopped at my mailbox. Talk about awkward turtle -- what a fortuitous thing that my shovel handle required so much careful scrutiny! After a few moments, though, I heard a bit of an engine growl and I knew I couldn't ignore the situation any longer.

So, I put the shovel down and looked up.

And the plow driver, right then, right there, gently dropped his blade. He scooped out what snow remained around my mailbox and he swept away the eight inches of plowturd from the bottom three feet of my driveway.

So.

My advice to everyone is to go forth and be nasty when nasty is what you truly need to be. It will not come back to haunt you; it may even pay big dividends!