It’s an odd pleasure I take out of shoveling the driveway.

We had about a foot of snow last night: heavy, wet, nasty snow like only the northwest can deliver.

I popped out of bed at 4:45AM convinced that the couple of inches of snow on the ground when I went to bed was all I would have to deal with. I brewed coffee, grabbed my snow suite and met the frigid morning with more gusto than is fitting for a man of my age. I grabbed the ergonomically correct snow shovel sitting at the ready by the front door and immediately thought, “There is a lot of snow on the front porch. I could have sworn I shoveled it off just before I went to bed.” Ah, the joys of senility.

Then there was the branch of the Inn tree, laying prone on the walk. Seemed odd, but I shook it to free it from the snow. It didn’t pop back up. It will never pop back up again. It was snapped by the heavy snow. I toddled down to the basement to get the pruning saw and returned to perform an amputation. It was painful, but I only whimpered once. Okay, I whimpered twice, but it is not true that I sobbed for hours on the front walk. Then my ergonomically correct snow shovel and I cleared the path to the cars. It was really eerie. At times I was convinced that there was way more snow than I thought appropriate. But it was dark and I wasn’t really awake.

I returned to the kitchen and sucked down my first cup of coffee. It was now 6AM and time to start in earnest. With a little bit of wet snow, if I didn’t shovel, no one was getting out of the driveway, least of all me.

For the next three and a half hours, I shoveled snow. I cursed, I sweated, I thought thoughts that are totally inappropriate to put in print. But I finally cleared the driveway to the highway, the last ten feet through the berm was excruciating. I staggered back to the house slowly enough to watch not one, but two snowplows go by and recreate the berm I had just broken my back clearing. That is when I sobbed in the front walk.

I spent the day exhausted, barely able to function. It is all I can do to move my fingers to type. But I did it. I’m not as lame as everyone says!