I'll get to the blizzard's details a little later tonight. But I need to get to My Fucking Father's latest blowup on me today.
Things started out well enough this morning. I realized that my parents would need some help with the snowstorm that is shitting snow on us right now, so I slept a little earlier, woke up in the morning, and finally came out of my room when I heard Father outside. He was actually quite chipper towards me, despite the weather; he was asking me, genuinely, questions about the storm, and he offered me this tea he said was expensive. Either he's a masochist or he was pleasantly surprised I woke up around the same time as he did; I think that if I didn't wake up in the morning, he was going to wake me up and make me go with them.
Even better was that Father was able to get the snowblower to finally work again. He did it for our last snowstorm, which was last weekend, but I was afraid it was on its last legs and that Father just was able to get it to operate one last time before it expired for good. I sure as fuck would not know what we'd do without it working. My sister's best friend lives two houses down from us and they have one; she even helped us clear our driveway last year. But not only can we face any snowstorm now, I feel as if we've recovered a feeling of independence. Never more do we have to break our backs as we break our shovels, or wait for my sister's best friend to come with her little plucky Toro to bail us out of our wintry prison.
Of course, that doesn't mean we're going to conquer every challenge. What my parents wanted to do was dig out the parking lots at the store and their warehouse, which was our first stop.
I hadn't been there in a couple years, so I don't know where the parking lot or driveway was. What Father told me to do -- well, actually yelling through the wind and because of the cold -- was cut a path around the warehouse. And he told me to take it easy on the throttle to make sure the auger isn't overwhelmed with the snow.
As soon as I started plowing, the wind that was part of all the background noise presented itself as my nemesis. Things were going well, but then I felt that my hands were numb. That is, I felt that I couldn't feel my hands. The snow, melting on my gloves, laid the groundwork of the chilling of my hands, and it did incredibly quickly.
When they always say on the news to be careful for frostbite when working outside, truthfully I thought, "Well, that can't happen to me." I fucking believe it now. Almost in an instant I couldn't feel my hands. The combination of numbness and burning was something that I don't think I've ever felt before. And I panicked when I called My Father, a panic that increased exponentially when I could barely use my fingers to even flip open my phone.
My fingers were red, really red, like I was using them, except of course I wasn't. And I felt ... nothing. I couldn't bend them, I could even sense them. I was freaking out when I got Mother on Father's phone, and ... it was either my fear, or the cold, or the noise from the snowblower, but I couldn't get her to understand what I wanted:
Do you have new gloves?
What?
I need new gloves.
What?
I can't feel my fingers!!
Your fingers numb?
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So as I waited I figure I'll just continue to try to mow. It's only going to get worse if I just sit there. And besides, I was making some impressive headway. The snow was about the height of the mouth of the auger, yet as long as I was taking it slow and not giving it more than it can handle, I was plowing through.
I had to take my gloves off to call, but when I tried to put them on, well, I barely could. I had five popsicles on the ends of my arms. That's when I prepared myself to call 911 if the wind blowing through my gloves into my hands finally convinced me to stop.
However, things got a little better after my call for help. I plowed to the point where I was being shielded by the warehouse, and I didn't notice that the wind might have been blowing from the side where the warehouse is, because the howling, icy gale threatening to amputate my fingers was suddenly gone. Moreover, I realized that there was a muffler on the snowblower that was spitting out exhaust. Hot exhaust. In fact, it had a cage around it and a warning that said, "HOT." Stopping the plowing to pass my hands in front of the exhaust made my fingers feel so good, and feel period, almost immediately. You know, maybe I could get through this after all -- or at least until I plow past the shelter of the warehouse.
In a little while I feel a tap; it was Father, pulling me away from control of the snowthrower. Man, is he pissed that I'm a pussy? He needed to feel my hands.
I retreat to the minivan. Mother was there. No one's shoveling at the store? Too deep, she said. And then a car comes down this street and gets stuck in the side snowbank. Maybe we should've moved over. As this was happening, Father was backing out of the clear path. He quitting?
We finally helped the guy and the girl with her out of getting stuck in the snowbank. Father yelling at me was not a help, however. It was funny; when we finally got their Subaru out of there, the girl behind the wheel continued to drive away, as if she wanted to ditch her man on the road! Aw, good times.
Oh yeah, what was the point of this? We loaded up the snowblower; My Father said, though he didn't actually say it, that we're going home. Crouched in the back, right next to the snowthrower, he still looked kind of peevish, like he was denied something, like a 5-year-old told by his mother that he couldn't get ice cream. Moreover, while loading back the snowblower in the car, when I asked him something, he snapped at me, like he usually does, whining at me loudly in order to rub out any thought I had about doing something that he didn't want to do, even if I wasn't implying I wanted to do something different from what he wanted. Oh-oh. The rather pleasant guy I talked to this morning was gone.
My Fucking Father seemed kind of impatient when we stopped off for gas (for the car and the canister we used to gas up the snowblower), but he finally showed off his immaturity when I got to the driveway. I thought I would park in the middle because 1) it was parked on the left in the morning and I thought it would be good to shovel the snow that was there; 2) they won't have to worry about space; and 3) I wasn't going anywhere tonight, so the minivan doesn't have to make way for my car (I was planning to cancel meeting my friends at the roller derby bout in St. Paul, but they postponed that bout till tomorrow. Sweet!).
Father was about to say something, then sighed in that particular way, like I was making him do something he didn't want to do, but he decided not to say anything and instead pout. "What do you want?!" I asked, I let him know I wasn't going to let his passive-aggressiveness just slide. He didn't say anything, but Mother said they wanted the car on the left side, where it usually is.
We stayed out to shovel a little more snow; this goddamn blizzard will not stop! My Fucking Father wouldn't talk to me, but through body language he pointed out what I was doing wrong with my shoveling. I swept the front door of all the snow that blew off the roof -- there was so much, and I did it twice today -- but didn't deal with the stair where no one walks on. But My Fucking Father clears it all out, like I did an incomplete job. He also shoveled past me and took care of the mouth of the driveway. Father, I was going to get down there.
And then later tonight he tells me that I can eat pizza in the downstairs fridge -- and he did it nicely! Am I just paranoid?
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