A Lesson in Snow Blowing, or how I got out of ever snow blowing again

The Man was home from work today. Too much snow on the ground means no work. So he had lots of time to cook. He cooked up a storm. Figuratively, not literally. 

We were treated to home made chicken and dumplings. Fancy star dumplings. He really takes the whole cooking thing to another level when he makes his famous star dumplings.

She just takes my breath away sometimes.

I look at her and wonder how she could be my daughter. She stuns me.

This is my new best friend. 

One, because it is red. And I love the color red. Especially when it is paired with white. As you can imagine, I love candy canes.

Two, because it doesn't have a big bad engine attached to it. I got into some trouble with the snow blower yesterday. The snow blower with the big bad engine.

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The driveway was still a bit messy from the storm and I had a friend coming over yesterday afternoon. There was a big pile of slushy gloop at the end of the driveway from the snowplows. We had gotten stuck in it on our way to church and the Man had to use four wheel drive to get us out of the gloop. I was sure my friend was going to get stuck. It needed to be cleaned up.

But J was off cleaning up my dad's driveway and K was in the house vacuuming and the Man couldn't use the snow blower because of his sore back.

You know what that means. 

I had to use the snow blower. I have never used the snow blower before. I do not want to use the snow blower. But I did not want my friend to get stuck in our driveway.

So the Man came out to the garage with me to give me a lesson on how to operate it. "You turn the gas on  this way and you jiggle the choke that way and you wiggle the throttle up and you push the power button down and then you pull this line and squeeze this handle to make it go and squeeze this handle to make the blades turn and blah, blah, blah..," on it went. Honest to Pete, there are way too many thing-a-ma-bobbers on that piece of machinery.

So he helped me get the snow blower started and told me to back it up to get it out of the garage. I looked down at one of the thing-a-ma-bobbers that had two turtles and two rabbits on it, one pair going forward and one pair going backward. I guessed this was the speed and the direction it would move so I engaged it in the backward turtle position. 

I am so glad I did not use the rabbit.

It started rolling backward and I backed up with it, pushing the handle down, and got far enough back to turn around and head forward. 

But the Man had not told me whether or not I could shift it into forward on the fly and I did not want to break the snow blower so I just kept backing up while I was trying to figure out how to stop the darn thing. I felt my back against the wall and the handle was pushing into my gut AND STILL GOING BACK.

It pinned me against the wall. 

The Man was yelling at me to stop it, STOP IT! 

But I didn't know how. He came running over and took my hands off the handles. 

"I didn't know how to stop it!" I wailed. He looked at me, incredulously, and said, "Just let go of the handles!"

Well, he never told me that.

I got the thing moving again, in a forward direction this time, and marched on down the driveway to clear the gloop.

On my first pass I was heading out into the road, trying to blow it to the side of the driveway, and I could not remember how to reverse direction.

I almost snow blowed into a passing car.

The Man started hollering at me to back up! BACK UP AND GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!

Not our best moment as a couple. 

He told me to put it away in the garage, it was too dangerous having me operate it. 

Whew. Mission accomplished. I never have to snow blow again.