thisnewday

Around mid-morning, I shoveled about 3-5" of snow from the sidewalk and driveway, starting from where the sidewalk meets the driveway at the front of the house and back to where the driveway ends, at the rear of the house. That's probably 15 x 40.' I leave the other half of the driveway, from the front of the house to the road, for the plowing service.

After that, around 11:30, I headed over to Mooney Ave, to what used to be the family home, intending to shovel the walks and stairs and to confirm that the furnace was still running. By that time, though, I needed a break. This latest snowfall, probably generated by the storm that's moving up the East Coast, was the heavier, moisture-laden kind, and I had to do a lot more lifting and carrying, rather than just pushing it to the end of the driveway and throwing it up over the snowbank.

So I decided to stay on the highway until the exit for Lowe's, where I picked up a container of ice melt which I needed at Mooney. After which I drove a couple of blocks south to Erie Boulevard and then continued east to the Barnes & Noble. At the B&N, I found a music theory book, that I'm gonna use to help my granddaughter with her keyboard percussion lessons, and then decided, as I was looping back towards Mooney Ave, to stop at the Subie dealership to get the oil changed.

On my way to the dealership, I also stopped at the Herb Philipson's Outdoor Store on the boulevard to check availability of a nitro-piston, .22-caliber air rifle for target shooting in the basement. Or to hunt small game, in the urban ruins, after Trump and the other "Little Rocket Man" push their respective nuclear buttons and end life as we know it.

(Trump claims, based on his delusional thought process, to have "the larger button." But what he apparently hasn't considered, before running his childishly-impulsive mouth, is that there are other "buttons" in this world, ones with LARGER HANDS THAN HIS hovering over them. OMG, please tell me that I didn't go there. OK, I did.)

By "small game" I mean primarily squirrel, although I have seen at least one very impressive flock of wild turkeys in the neighborhood as well. I offer that as an alternative to those who disdainfully refer to squirrels as "tree rats." But where they see tree rats, I see protein. And, no, they don't taste like chicken. Sorry. Then again, neither does KFC. In my opinion.

As I've found to be the case elsewhere, Philipson's stock was badly depleted during the run-up to Christmas, so I may just resort to one of the specialty retailers, like PyramydAir.com, to get what I really want. I've decided to buy something halfway decent that I can maybe pass on to my daughter who's become something of a "prepper," possibly influenced by her 9/11 experience when she lived in New York.

In the meantime, said daughter had been monitoring my progress through this series of mostly-unplanned stops and I had been assuring her that I was, in fact, inventing excuses to avoid going to the house to shovel. (She totally spoiled my fun by agreeing that oil changes were important and saying that she didn't blame me for not wanting to shovel. Usually, she's not such an enabler, lol.)

When I finally got there I found that, as expected, the plows had completely blocked the driveway, forcing me to park on the street. I actually think that the Subie could've made it in and out OK, especially with the new tires and my expert driving, cough, cough.

But driving through a snow bank is never a smart thing to do, if it can be avoided, because you have no way of knowing what the plow may have deposited there along with the snow. Even something like a broken-off chunk of ice could dent or sever a brake line or cause other damage to the undercarriage. At the very least, you're gonna pack the inside rim of the wheels with snow which will throw off their balance and result in annoying and potentially dangerous vibration on the highway.

The snow was actually coming down again when I got out of the car and there was a pretty brisk wind to go with the 6-degree temperature. I was astonished at how much snow had accumulated on the sidewalk and front steps. My surprise was probably owing to the fact that I'd been shoveling two or three times a day back at the house, so it never accumulated there. Here, it was easily over my knees, especially where it had drifted, and I had a hard time getting up the front steps and onto the porch where I keep the shovel.

Afterwards, I was thinking that I could probably just lean it against the outside of the house, since nobody else in the neighborhood seems to even know what it's for. But with my luck it'd be spotted by some passing addict, maybe one that I know, stealing her way to forever.

Honestly, what's happened on the east side is really so sad. Every year or so, another house gets sold to an absentee landlord who doesn't care about maintenance standards or quality of life in the neighborhood. Or who they rent to, as long as they get a security deposit and no one burns the place down. And even then.

I swear, walking down the street from one summer to the next, you can sense that the aggregate I.Q. of the neighborhood has dropped another 10 points in the interim. Not a nice thing to say, I know, but that's really how it is.

Anyway, it took me a good 30 to 40 minutes to clear the sidewalk and front steps and to put down a layer of sand once I'd finished the shoveling. I did have the new jug of ice melt from Lowe's, but I don't like using it unless absolutely necessary because it's so hard on the concrete sidewalks and steps.

When I was done, I texted my daughter again and told her that ours was the only sidewalk on the block that had been cleared that day. Or that week, if you don't count the two women who have houses across the street and continue to be good neighbors and conscientious property owners--despite the growing odds against them.

On my way home, I stopped at McD's and picked up a Southwest salad with two dressings and a root beer with no ice. Gotta eat healthy in my old age, you know. Pftt! On the road, it was slow going and I stayed on surface streets the whole way because Central New York is now under a travel advisory.

I decided, once I got here, to eat dinner, take a couple of Ibuprofen, and call it a night. It'll be the second day in a row that I've skipped my exercises, which I don't like to do. But my shoulder is now bothering me, the one that I hurt a year or two ago when I fell, and I don't want to aggravate that further.

So, instead of my workout, I'm gonna put my feet up and start reading my new music theory book.

I think my granddaughter, and Danlee Mitchell (see previous entry), would be OK with that...

LPK
Dreamwidth
1.5.2018