Adventures in Ice-Scraping

This week's blog is turning out to be all about the snow. I'm going with it so hopefully you don't mind too much.

So, yesterday, we had our snow day. It was truly good. I got to exercise a little longer, be lazy a little longer, do part of a jigsaw puzzle, drink hot chocolate and....clean off my car.

"Oh", I can hear you saying. "Why did you have to do that, Captain Monkeypants? You weren't going out in that nasty weather were you?"

Well, no. However, I knew the next day I'd have to get up for work and would not feel like cleaning off my car. So I ambitiously thought that maybe I'll clean off my car, pull and and back into my space so that in the morning, I could just pull on out slowly and be on my merry way to work.

Have you ever noticed how life never turns out the way you plan?

So, I got dressed into my winter boots and coat and gloves and went to face my snowy car. I have this handy sheepskin ice-scraper mitt-thingy that I got as a Christmas gift so I naively thought that would clean the snow off nicely.

The only problem was that I'd forgotten about the sleet. You see, in between our first four inches of snow and our second 3 inches, we had about 3 inches of sleet. This means that my car was covered by an ice sandwich.

Instead of scraping nicely, I ended up having to use my ice-scraper as a chisel. After much whacking and hitting, some of the ice began to chip away. This may be because I had turned my car on and being the sweet creature it is, it was heating the inside so the windows warmed up thus making the ice slightly easier to scrape.

I ran into a slight problem with my ice-scraper though. The top kept flying off as I chiseled. And yes, I did hit myself in the head with the ice-scraper. After all, I am Captain Monkeypants, Mistress of the Calamity. I also got a little too excitedly vigourous in my chiseling and didn't think about ice flying up and hitting me. Of course it did but, thankfully, I was wearing my glasses and they protected me from my own enthusiasm.

Because of the ice-sandwich on my car, it was slightly easier to remove some of the snow. There was enough room under the ice to maneuver the scraper and, with a lot of energy, thusly lifting, allowing the frozen stuff to be lifted off in sheets. I frisbeed those off to the grassy space where few people dare to walk when it's icy.

Finally, my car was rather clean. I decided now would be the time to pull out and reverse back into my parking space. That was a lovely notion but, alas, I was stuck. I used my handy icescraper to try to free the wheels but that did not work. I was still stuck.

I needed a shovel. I live in an apartment building and recently moved from California. There is no reason I believed I needed a shovel. Well, that was until my car got stuck. I wasn't the only one. There seemed to be few shovels in my apartment complex. I saw a girl with one and was going to ask to borrow it but she disappeared before I could get a chance. I put my car in neutral and decided to give myself a push (yes, not the wisest idea ever but it seemed like a good idea at the time). That didn't work.

Deflated, I went upstairs and called my friend/coworker who lives in the same complex. Sadly, she did not own a shovel and was also stuck. We decided I'd head to her place and I would push while she tried to reverse. Yeah, that didn't work. We pushed quite hard too.

Fortunately, someone had a shovel and helped us dig. Freedom! We borrowed the shovel and drove down to my car. After much digging and pushing and pushing on the gas, I, too, was free. I managed to neatly back my car in and dig a little more to ensure I wouldn't get stuck in the snow in the morning.

All of this took about three hours. I used two ice-scrapers, both had flying heads on them. My muscles are sore from the pushing and digging and vigourous scraping. It was actually sort of fun. Then again, as I've been told many times before, I have a strange sense of fun.

This morning, I managed to pull out of my parking spot whith no problem whatsoever. The roads are a little vile and there are many idiots out there driving, one of whom cut me off as I was going through a green light today. I'm glad I could stop without skidding. I honked my horn loudly at him. It's those people that cause the problems, not the ice and snow.

I know I'll be called crazy again for this but I can safely say I love winter. It's a challenge and it makes life much more interesting. The layers of snow and ice add a layer of complication and puzzle solving that summer does not. I do, however, think I might need another ice-scraper. I'm also going to buy my very own shovel. I think I'll name it Digger.

Happy Thursday.