wonderland

i shoveled snow for the first time the other night, but not before i stood in the middle of the street like a madman and took pictures. with enough snow coverage, everything looks so...unsullied. snow covers the fall leaves our neighbor never bagged and the chipped paint spots on our porch steps and the poo left by the dogs walked by the crazy woman (or maybe man - i'm not sure, frankly) who lives on the street behind us but brings her dogs to our street to relieve themselves. snow even makes the horrible evergreen bushes in front of our house look beautiful. although this is absolutely the last winter they will be snow-covered on our property, because we are replacing them this year if i have to dig them out by hand myself. i mean it. i hate them with the burning intensity of a thousand suns. but don't they look pretty dressed in snow?


i have always been able to avoid shoveling until now. when i was a kid, the only time we lived in a snow climate was when i was aged 8 to 11, and that duty fell to my dad. from the time i left home for college until we bought this house 2 1/2 years ago, i've either lived in the south or in a setting where i wasn't responsible for snow removal (dorm, apartment, condo), and the first two winters in this house i was able to claim the pregnancy exemption [thanks, boys, for your help in that department]. but tuesday night i had no excuse, and if i didn't shovel i was going to have to either (a) go down to the scary, scary basement to deal with the laundry justin had started or (b) pack up the more fragile christmas ornaments [yes, our tree is still up. because we're just that classy.], so i bundled up and headed out.


and you know, it's kind of fun. i wouldn't want to do it for a living or anything, but i did the front walks and curbs and around the cars while justin did the side, around the carriage house, and the porch, which made quick work of it, and i got the satisfaction of meaningful physical labor that i don't get from the treadmill at the y or from pushing a pile of paper on my desk. it absolved me of my guilt for not keeping our appointment at the y that night. my inner compulsive freak enjoyed making straight lines of snow banks along the edges of the sidewalks and my inner aesthete loved arranging the shoveled snow i heaped on the tree lawn into rolling alps for stuart little-sized skiiers. i could picture milo in a couple more winters playing in the snow we piled up into mountains for him to jump in, and making snow angels, and writing his name in the snow in whiz [maybe just in the backyard, though], and it kept me warm.

*****

milo is six months old today. we sang him "happy birthday" and he grinned. i almost can't believe we've made it this far.