Motrin Pain.

Do you remember that commercial? A sad schlep is shoveling his driveway. Maybe he's in Minnesota. Or could be Canada. It's heavy, dense snow. You can tell he's suffering. "There's pain..." says a voice. He finally gets the end. He's just about done. Then the snowplow comes by and heaves a huge slushy mountain of snow across the bottom of the driveway.

"...and then there's Motrin pain."

Well, we're living Motrin pain here today.

It started snowing last night, around 7 or so, and I've barely seen it stop since. I think there was a break for 1/2 an hour or so this morning where I could see the house across the street. Now all I can see is snow snow snow.

Maymuna is in heaven. We spent all Hafsa's nap time outside this morning. I tried to heave all the snow over the fence into the backyard so that her sledding hill would get impressively high and totally awesome. She had fun.

She, actually, was still having fun when we went back out to shovel the driveway again during Hafsa's afternoon nap (baby monitor safely encased in a ziploc bag). There was just as much snow as this morning. But I was not my vigorous morning-self. No no no. Now I am achy-painy mommy and I just shovel the snow to the edge of the driveway and that's it. All business.

Actually "shovel" is a relative term, perhaps inappropriate for what I was really doing, which was mainly just pushing the snow to the side, with minimal or no actual lifting. I think that "shoveling" insinuates both pushing and lifting. The driveway is considerably narrowed now, but I think we can still back the car out of the garage.

Anyway, I'm hurting a bit now I must admit (where's the motrin?), and I think no amount of stretching could have helped me prepare for lifting that much snow. The very worst part of it all is that I was talking to our neighbour (standing still for just a few minutes resulted in us both being completely caked in a sticky layer of flakes). She told me that 2 interstate highways nearby have been closed. The university is closed. There's a storm coming up from the south (what is this we are having right now??? I ask!) which resulted in the streets being closed to traffic completely, and so the snowfall here is only going to get worse. We're going up from 2 inches an hour to possibly 3. Totally snowfall (which is only due to end tomorrow night) is being estimated to be 20 inches. Isn't that like 50 centimeters??? Not good, people. Not good.

So if you haven't heard from us by the weekend, rest assured, we are hibernating. Or waiting for someone to dig us out. Come to think of it, I saw someone go past me on a dog sled. He could sled us to higher, less snowy ground. (yes, pulled by actual dogs... "mush! mush!" and all that)

It's possible I was hallucinating... but I don't think so. Another snow-induced hallucination: the guy across the street who snow-blowed his driveway after giving me a jaunty wave. Grrr.