Shoveling, for sanity & other good reasons.

There was a lot of shoveling going on over the weekend in my neighborhood. I was surprised. I had no idea so many people around me owned real shovels and snow boots and could/would actually move noteworthy amounts of snow (I can't explain why, not in one blog post.)

But it's been a ghost town today. And when I opened the front door to take the dog out this morning, I swear I've never seen an animal look so surprised and dismayed. "What, more of THIS stuff? What am going to do?" *In whimper-y dog voice he thought this, of course.

Well we walked a couple feet and he stopped. (Warning, TMI ahead...) I thought he was having second thoughts about the whole thing, the way he was standing up to his chest in snow and looking around all worried, no clearing in sight. But thank goodness it turned out he was weeing right into the snow. I just couldn't tell, because he couldn't do anything but stand there.

Obviously I care about the dog and his ability to do his business outside; Boomer is a good dog, he'll hold it until he can't. Which is why I was driven to go out and shovel this afternoon, even though it was still snowing and drifts were minimizing my progress right behind me. That and I felt like I was going mad from staring at a computer for what seemed like forever trying to figure out a class assignment that had me near tears I was so frustrated. Days of that will make a person crave manual labor.

I shoveled away, with no real direction except to uncover a patch of grass or two, enough to coax the dog back out, let him know that it's going to be ok.
Then I felt like I should get some snow off the heater, clear the sidewalk connecting the front and back door, and started to make a path across the yard to the neighbor's house, because she's used to just walking out her back door over to ours. And that would also mean more grass. I didn't make it very far to the neighbor's, but boy, what a great exhaustion.

I heard on the news yesterday that a lot of the emergency cases going into the hospitals (or trying to) are people who have had heart attacks while shoveling. So, if anyone feels like a nice round of it, do be mindful of what your body is telling you. (Currently I've just got my back calling me a dumbass.)