small group tonight...

Today I am forced to think about beautiful things in life because the past few days haven't been so beautiful.

Let's just be honest here. I hate snow. I hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand burning...well, I may not want to continue that sentence because the version I use isn't so nice.

Well with this stupid snowstorm that came two nights ago, and with me housesitting in the country where winds and drifting makes for a very unpleasant shovelling experience, I woke up to a very annoying morning. But it was soon to be aleviated just a little when I decided that it would be impossible to actually get to work right away in the morning, so I spent the whole morning just catching up on a lot of youth conference work. But then the time came when I saw the snowplough come by and I figured I would give getting out of the driveway another shot.

And I got stuck in the drift at the side of the road. Luckily the nice neighbours next door saw me frustrated and came over with a shovel and some elbow grease and got me out in about 5 minutes or so. But on my way home I decided to try to gain enough momentum, again, to get back onto the other side of the drift and into the driveway.

No dice.

Stuck again, and this time feeling very very sick. So I left it and made a note to wake up early enough to call dad over so his van could push me into the driveway so I could shovel the drift away and be set to go for work today.

So I went to bed. At 6:30 pm. With a lot of medicine in my body and the intention to just nap off my headache and nausea. I woke up at 1:00 am. Well the nap felt good but I wasn't looking forward to struggling through sleep for the rest of the night. However, it worked out that after an hour and a half of MSN chatting and writing an email or two, I fell back asleep around 3:00, straight through until 8:00, when I called my dad. I felt refreshed but not looking forward to the shovelling ahead of me.

I worked on the driveway for half an hour by the time dad got here...he pulled over to the side of the road and...slid into a 2" snowy ditch on the side of the road. So now did we not only have to try to get MY car unstuck, but his giant rear-wheel-drive van that's slid sideways into a ditch.

Oh joy.

My car came out easily with a bit of shovelling and a lot of salt, but we'd run out of salt while trying to get dad out of the ditch. Happy days arrived when the nice people next door came back out with a tow rope and a 4x4 and dad has a trailer hitch. They pulled him out in no time at all and after making sure I could get BACK out of my driveway, dad left.

Number of times dropped cellphone out of pocket while shovelling: 4
Number of times dropped keys the same: 2
Number of icy patches ran into, leaving shovel-handle shaped bruises in stomach: countless
Number of times rescued by friendly Jewish neighbours: 2
Number of swear words normally out of my mouth during this time: 24+
Number of swear words actually out of mouth: 4
Total hours slept in one night: 11
Amount of water left in cistern: < 1 L
Number of showers in past 3 days because of above: 1 (I feel gross)

I really dont' want this to be a yucky day for me. Think of something happy...oh YAY now I have a title for this post...