The temperature dropped to 9 degrees last night and it’s 58 in the house, which isn’t too bad except that my fingers get really cold writing. Once the fire gets going, it’ll heat up. The main driveway is passable again after my ex next door spent half a day plowing yesterday. Apparently he decided it needed to be done because a friend nearly slid off into the creek near the top of the rise a few days back. I’m glad he has friends who like to visit or else he might never plow until it’s too deep for his ATV, which it almost is.
I’ve been trying to find someone to plow my spur and to help with the main drive, but no luck. No one wants to drive out here to plow even though some plow quite nearby. It’s something I hadn’t foreseen, this difficulty of getting folks to come out here to work. I mean it is only five miles from town!!!
It took me five hours to shovel the deck, but I’m glad I did it. The stuff was really piling up and I’m afraid it can’t take that much weight. Who knows when it’ll stop coming down. I earned sore muscles for all that shoveling. And the drive is thigh deep. I have to get some help with that.
On top of that, I needed to bring in Presto logs from the hardware store because I’m worried I won’t have enough firewood for the entire winter. This was supposed to happen weeks ago, but the neighbor with the truck is full of good intentions and sometimes lacks the opportunity to follow them through, shall we say. Anyway, turns out the delivery had to be this weekend or who knows when because of other commitments. Unplowed driveway be damned.
In her trusty 4WD truck with chains, she insisted she’d be good backing into the unplowed drive. But she’s unfamiliar with it and rather overzealous and quite confident of her driving skills, though some have suggested otherwise. So back in she did and kept too close to the uphill side, a natural instinct were it not for the drainage ditch there. She got stuck up to the axle, tore up the drive, and nearly capsized the truck, dumping a large share of the logs into the snow. Another friend helped dig them out and get them under shelter quickly because they absolutely disintegrate when wet. He also promised to bring his big snowblower up tomorrow to clear my drive. Hooray. Thank heaven.
Yikes. The drive’s a real mess, impassable for sure, because we had to get a tractor in to tow out the truck. Now my friend’s snowblower seems to be out of commission, but he assures me he’ll come up tomorrow with his neighbor’s four-wheeler and plow because after a slightly warmer day the snow is now too heavy to blow. I’m worried I’ll have to park at the bottom and haul everything in the half mile all winter if we don’t get this figured out soon.
But it’s such a small problem compared to a friend’s ongoing and ever uglier divorce, another’s serious financial woes, their personal and parental medical problems including, perhaps, early onset dementia, vague murmurings of what sounds like abuse and an irregularity in a breast that now requires a lumpectomy and more tests.
I hate it that I seem to use their serious issues as a reality check, but they really do help me see how truly blessed I am now, living here in this beautiful place I built, where my biggest challenge is the driveway. Oh, and a brief encounter with my ex to deliver his wine that was incorrectly delivered to me. He looked like it nearly killed him to stand outside (he would NOT come in) and chat for a minute while I retrieved the wine. But such small problems. Thank you, universe.
Jan. 8, 2016
Ruminations 