A game of inches and forward momentum

Bill started sharing his analysis of the Winter of '07-'08 a couple of weeks ago. He bases his conclusions on the daily work he performs with the snowblower and the two tractors in the driveway and the lane. My football-loving hubby maintains that every major achievement and challenge associated with this winter is governed by inches.

And, the way I see it, we've got an ample roster for putting on a good daily game of an inch here and an inch there. The three dogs do well as the tackles----getting in the way and tripping you when you're trying to carry a wiggly load of wood for 100 yards through a foot of snow.

The snowblower and the human shovelers are the guards who open significant holes so everything else can do its work. The tractor and loader functions as the quarterback, only after the tractor and blade (defensive lineman) pushes snow out of the way, so that the Kubota can hurl that snow even further through the air.

And, the horses and cats---they're the laid-back spectators watching us all work and cheering us on because they know we represent their passageway to paydirt aka food and shelter. Occasionally, Mama moose and her baby represent too many men on the very small field of space, so they get penalized by being yelled at and sent somewhere down the road.

Well, it snowed seven inches last night, thereby adding to the height of the canyon walls and and an overtime period to winter. So, Bill went out there again this morning and cut through the snow one more time so that I could get to the barn door and to the barnyard gate.

I still had another 20 minutes of shoveling to open the barn door and the gate---both of which fit nicely into his inches theory. The day I can open that gate more than 24 inches and not get scrunched by Miss Lily as I turn her loose will be a day of celebration.

In Bill's daily X's and O's for clearing the driveway and lane, he figures if he can cut off an inch here and an inch there along those canyon walls, the effort could make all the difference in whether or not there's room to park a vehicle. Bill has always been meticulous that way, and that has been good for our survival in these winter struggles.

He also keeps himself motivated by the goal of days marked by forward momentum and no lost ground. Well, we had two or three days in a row where we used all those shovels he bought at Merwins, along with the trusty old ones and made visible progress. We could see out windows. We found the deck, at least a pathway's worth. We could walk down the lane to the machine shed without having to plan ahead for the trip. I even found my way into that caved-in storage shed to retrieve my planting pots.

We were starting to feeling pretty darned good with those few days of forward progress. Well, today we've lost most of what we gained. We've been sacked, and we're about 25 yards behind the line of scrimmage. Today most of the windows around the house will once again be blocked by snow. I say "will" because the seven inches of new snow has just begun to slide off the roof.

They've also been blasting for avalanches up at Schweitzer for the past hour, and I'm sure that the booms from up there and the roof sliding snow have sent Annie Dog to the barn for another day. We've noticed lately that this has been pretty hard on her because she's afraid of thunder or any similar sounds. She has discovered that the country music blasting in the barn muffles out all the other bad sounds.

We now have so much snow coming off the roof that it's threatening to break some windows, and, at this point, we can't do much about it cuz it's solid ice underneath. So, momentum lost. I noticed this morning that I'll have to shovel another path out there to the satellite dish because it's nearly buried after last night's dump. And, to get wood for today, I'll be walking or snow shoeing through seven new inches of snow down the lane which Bill plans to attack again tonight.

It was a game of inches for a school bus this morning. I called my sisters to see if they had to go to school. They did. We had a bad cell phone connection, so my sister Barbara called me back and said not to go around the Center Valley way to their home because a bus was stuck in the ditch just past their driveway and was blocking part of the road.

I know I will be going over there because I'm sure my mother's satellite dish has a dose of that seven new inches of snow, and she may want to watch TV today, along with feeding her squirrels. But then again, maybe her windows will be blocked off again too.

We're very weary, as are our neighbors. Bill told me last night that one of our neighbors told him that he has actually entertained many thoughts of returning to California after living here for several years. He's sick and tired of plowing snow, as are we all.

The weather experts say it's going to start changing today. It will get warm, and it will rain.

That means a snow melt. That also means the snow has to go somewhere, and it will definitely need some inches of space to find its way. There are very few inches available for the snow to find its way out of here. We all know that, and we all fear how many inches deep the water's gonna be when it all starts melting. We Loves also wonder about forward progress when the rain falls on top of the 48 inches or so of frozen snow on top of our storage shed.

We have very few choices, though. Like all the other weary folks in this region, we'll keep on huddling inside this house and plotting our defense for the winter of '07-'08's next offense.

One of these days, we're gonna break loose with a big play and find the goal line of spring. That's when we're gonna get a big jug of gatorade and pour it all over ourselves for winning this Super Bowl of Winters.