I ain't "lion" about the beginning of March 2018

 I have had several lapses in judgement lately. It began yesterday when my nine-year-old blacksmith instructed me to lift her eighty pound anvil onto its custom-built platform. "I don't know," I said, uncertainly, "that's pretty heavy." But with her "encouragement," two 4th grade boys and I hefted that monstrosity into place. And it was so worth the sound of hearing the authentic clanking of a real anvil echo through our Colonial Days presentations. Who needs a working right shoulder any way?

Said the girl who decided to ignore a week's long worth of dire weather warnings broadcasted daily on her local and national news feeds.

I was born and raised in Wyoming County. Lake effect for us is the equivalent of an additional filter on our Smartphone photo apps. Just another feature of living in Western New York that, when in use, can temporarily change how we view our landscape. I do not prescribe to mass hysteria about a storm system coming in. There is no batten-ing down of the hatches...no emptying of store shelves during a run on water. We rarely loot (except during Halloween and we usually stick to only robbing our own children). We have four-wheel drive vehicles. Snowplows. Snow blowers. And neighbors. We have wood-stoves. Pellet stoves. And generators. No storm was going to chase me home early from work. I had lesson plans to write.

I was a bit surprised when I hit the parking lot at 8 pm to find snow drifted up to my truck's wheel-wells. The 360 degree doughnut I indulged in in the empty plaza persuaded me to put the vehicle into four-wheel drive. As the rear end of my truck raced the front of my truck up the hill, I realized that I may have made a poor decision in staying at school. My four-minute commute turned into twenty as I inched along...finally seeing my house...attempting to ease my ten mph speed to a stop....before sliding right by my house. Okay. No problem. I'll just turn into a neighbor's driveway and head back. Wait. Is that wall of snow my neighbor's driveway? My music was off now as I slowly maneuvered down a path better suited for an Iditarod race. A pair of headlights in my rear-view mirror quickly caught up to me as a small car easily outdistanced my big lumbering truck. Am I this bad a driver, I wondered as the car hovered close behind me, obviously eager to get by. But I was white-knuckling for all I was worth at this point so he/she would have to wait. I made it to the small convenience store at the end of the road. Another empty parking lot but I had lost my bravado and just cried for a minute. I called Brad to let him know that I would be driving past the house again in a few minutes (or an hour) and, in the event that I couldn't stop, I was simply going to open the door and fling myself out into the darkness. His job, of course, was to catch me. "Make sure not to tense up when you jump," he advised.

I followed a small bus back onto my treacherous road...it was like a little yellow beacon for hope until it fishtailed wildly and landed perpendicularly to me. He/she was able to get it straightened out but at this point, I was certain that white death was eminent. Fifteen minutes later, my house was in sight again. Brad was waving a flashlight like an air traffic controller. Forget stopping. Forget backing in. I pointed the nose of my truck toward the driveway and we slammed into our spot. I cried some more. And then went into the house to discover that Brad had made fried chicken. Just the recipe for an emotional eater.

We woke up to no school and a LOT of snow. Not dachshund-high. Rottweiler-high. I was suffering from anvil-shoulder so Brad encouraged me to stay in the house. I folded socks to assuage my guilt. But after an hour of watching him relentlessly attack unyielding snow, I tromped out to "help."  There were three clear stages of snow removal. Stage One was barreling at the fortress of frost at one hundred miles per hour and pummeling it like a battering ram. Fun but not effective. Stage Two was the slow but precise cuts in the packed snow made by the snowblower. Stage Three was old-school shoveling. I would make a stab at shoveling but would be shoo-ed away by Brad to do other more important jobs such as clearing snow off the van or filling the bird-feeders.

Four hours later...Brad finally finished. Anticipating that he would be done an hour earlier than that, I graciously made him pancakes. The hour-old flapjack frisbees were his "reward" for working so hard. He choked on the first bite and begged for more syrup before handing large samples of his "reward" to the dogs.  Ungrateful.