Am I Afraid Of The Blower?

So it snowed Sunday night.  A few inches ... well, at least I think it was a few inches.  The storm ended with freezing drizzle, and I think that capped and even melted some of the snow that fell.  Interesting to see the effect of that freezing drizzle.  It gave the snowpack a crusty top, sort of like French onion soup; going to work yesterday morning I saw the light from the houses around me bounce its reflection off the new snow.  The snow had a matte finish to it, which is very interesting.  Also interesting is the way your feet doesn't just fall into the snow but is resisted by it, at least for a nanosecond, by the freezing drizzle up top.  Once you break through, any snow/ice you kick around sounds like broken glass.

Anyway, we got a bit more than three inches Sunday night.  Over the day today another inch or two is going to fall.  (Phew; before Christmas meteorologists thought it could give us three-to-five inches.)  Roads probably will be hell, so I hope to survive getting home in one piece and hope my heart doesn't burst through my chest from all the stress and anxiety.  (I also hope I can drive up my driveway, even if it is just an inch or two of new snow.)  I've shoveled parts of the driveway so it looks a bit, uh, "brokedown" (is that the wrong thing to say?  Is that even a word anybody understands?), but honestly, I just wanted to plow a way for my car's tires to drive down and up.  Everything else can wait.

Well, can't wait any longer.  Besides a chance for flurries Thursday, no big and measurable snowstorms are coming for a while.  I used the relative back-to-back storms as an excuse not to use the snowplow on my driveway, but after this storm clears -- and, also a change from earlier warnings, it will pass in the early evening and not the heart of the evening like originally forecasted -- all the snow that is going to fall will have fallen, and so it's time to clear out the, what, four-to-six inches of snow?

Last night I went to the garage and took a look at the snowplow.  I was going to put gas in, but apparently Father has already filled it.  Now, it's just a matter of remembering how in the hell you're supposed to work it.  Then, some time this evening, I will plow.  Hopefully.  Maybe.

You see, I could have used the snowblower Sunday night, when it looked really bad out there.  But I came up with a bunch of excuses: There will be more falling overnight and so what I'm doing is going to be useless; I'm tired from working the Vikings Game; there will be another snowstorm two days from now and so I can sweep it all up in one fell swoop then; etc.  They're all valid, but I hate to admit that the reason I didn't use the blower Sunday night, and why I'm reluctant to use it tonight, is because I'm afraid it'll break down on me.

It has before.  Now, I've blog posted here on WAF when it does work and how much of a fucking man I feel once the driveway is clear.  But I also have bad memories of it not starting, or not being able to start it once I turned it off.  And it will be the first time I use it this winter.  Will it work?  I don't know if I want to know if it doesn't, because then that would mean I put my faith in a machine that let me down.  And deep down, I think that's the main reason why a part of me is OK with shoveling a part of the driveway and just driving on top of the stuff I don't want to clear: I hate being disappointed.

Well, I guess we'll see if my fears are grounded in truth tonight.  Might as well use the snowblower and see if it conks out and gives me yet another bad memory.