Goddamn Snowblower Doesn't Work

This will be the first of a few blog posts about this "Snowpocalypse."

Goddamn snowblower doesn't work.  My Fucking Father laid into me the first time it didn't work.  I thought it was because it needed time to juice up, but I put the plug in last night and it still doesn't fucking work.  Piece of shit.

I'm not going anywhere today but am tomorrow, and since there'll be snow falling through Saturday I needed to get a jump on this.  Thank Buddha my 'Rents weren't home, for that allowed me to go out about 90 minutes ago and get some shoveling in.

I was going to give myself at most an hour because I feared the weight of the snow.  It was worse than I anticipated.  This storm was fed by the Gulf Of Mexico so it's wet snow, heavy snow, "heart attack" snow.  I know this firsthand; about a decade-and-a-half ago my Grandmother was shoveling snow while we were inside.  She laid down in her bed and started wheezing a lot.  Eventually we stopped watching TV and realized she needed help.  We got our Uncle to take her to the hospital where they diagnosed her with a heart attack and said she needed a quadruple bypass.

She won't ever shovel again; I'll see to that.  Unfortunately I was relying on this piece-of-shit snow blower so I wouldn't have to shovel, either.  But I did, and as soon as I dug the shovel and plowed it through the first tract of snow on the driveway, I knew I had lost.  It's fuckin' heavy, dude.  And I felt a twinge up my left side as soon as threw the snow on my shovel off to the side.  The positive I wanted to take from shoveling now is getting some exercise in, but I think the only thing I exercised was my heart muscle, and it still feels like it's about to fucking explode.

This was when I started cursing Father.  The shovel I used is metal and has a shallow bucket.  It's heavy carrying it around as is, so it only got heavier as I scooped up the snow, and when I dumped it I still felt the weight of the shovel so it felt like I hadn't dumped out the snow at all.  Every fucking winter whenever I use that goddamn thing I think My Father went into fucking Menards and just bought the first goddamn shovel he saw.  Really, Pops, you couldn't find a lighter shovel?  This has to be the worst shovel on Earth, right?  So I look online ... and experts say it really doesn't matter!  Dammit, shoveling snow sucks no matter what tool you use, isn't it?  Fuck!

Still, I perservered, driving the snow down the driveway as much as possible, with each subsequent pass about half the length of the attempt before, then waddling over one of the sides of the driveway and tossing it over so that the pristine white is pocked with this gray clump.  I didn't really think I could make it to an hour; I spent most of my time stopping, spacing out, wondering if anybody would come across me if my heart suddenly blew out my chest, and I would begin to have a seizure and vomit blood and fall on the ground to spasm until all the blood drained out of me.  There were only one or two cars (one of them going and coming back) I saw driving down the street the hour I was there, I think, so I'm pretty sure I would've died.  Too bad -- having the night virtually to myself was another of the things that I had looked forward to while shoveling way early in the morning.

I had to stop.  There are two or three bare tracks that curve and slice down the driveway, and since it's still snowing it'll be like I never stepped out this morning when I come back in the afternoon.  I'll try the thrower again, but there's a spark plug that needs to be replaced or something because I don't think that fucker's going to work.  And I need all this snow, plus the snow yet to fall, off of the driveway by the time I leave for work Saturday morning.  Fuck me.

If I die of a heart attack shoveling, let this be my last words.