Saturday Fun Day in February

A Clean Driveway is the Sign of a Healthy Mind ... and An Aching Back

It has been far too cold to deal with the harsh realities of Life lately, especially the harsh realities of the Great Outdoors in Michigan.

Did you know there are actually people around here who sit on overturned buckets all day long in the middle of frozen lakes in order to fish? And most of the fish they catch have to be thrown back because they are too small?

(It's true. We saw it on the news last night. And I thought all the crazy people were in New York!!)

For the rest of us -- what I call the "Walking Not-Quite-Dead" -- we content ourselves with the occasional venture out across the frozen tundra of our driveways in order to push the snow off to one side so that our vehicles can traverse its length and get out onto the road which will carry us to the store so we don't starve to death or get cabin fever (you can only play so many games of Monopoly before your brain melts -- my current record is "1"). This also counts as the major form of exercise for those of us with otherwise restricted physical activity levels, generally limited to walking down the stairs to get something from the fridge, walking back upstairs to sit in front of a computer and pretend to work all day, tapping our fingers across a keyboard with great gusto but very little thought as we type inanities into the Ether, and laughing out loud from stupid things we see on YouTube.

The latest bout of ridiculously-frigid weather transformed what had been a lovely blanket of soft, white fluff across our driveway into an impermeable shield of crystalline pseudo-granite nearly two inches thick. To attack this formidable barrier with a measly plastic snow shovel (they're all plastic shovels up here because snow just slides right off the metal ones) would be the height of folly, therefore my Weapon of Choice is a stout steel Ice Chopper which I've used since our first winter here. The wonderful thing about this tool is that it provides the proper inertial mass to slice deeply between the layers of concrete and ice, and the leverage to separate them so that the ice comes out in large blocks; then the tool can be used to chop the large blocks into smaller, easily manageable pieces which can be swept toward the street with a simple push-broom.

No need for shovels here!

The downside of the operation is that it requires a constant, repetitive applied force -- kind of like a hammer -- in order to force the blade between the layers of concrete and ice. And that is very difficult to maintain over long stretches of time (and long stretches of time are required to clear an entire driveway!). Which means that is necessary to take a break every five or ten minutes in order to rest the muscles. But that does provide an opportunity to alternate between the bone-crushing chop action and the gentle sweeping motion of the broom. Now if only the broom wasn't being required to push mounds of heavy ice across the sandpaper-like concrete surface!  It's a very well-rounded bit of physical exertion.

The important goal here is to get the reflective white surface of the snow off the driveway so that when the sun comes out, it will melt any remaining ice. It is possible to leave a bit of ice here and there in non-critical areas, but we always spread a little dirt on those so that the non-reflective surface will absorb the heat of the sun and thereby promote melting of what remains.

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Cheryl is at it again!!

In my philosophy, there is no greater joy than being able to make oneself useful to someone else. And this past week provided at least two opportunities for me to help Cheryl out in the kitchen.

First, I was able to assist her with preparing a HUGE Israeli salad on Thursday night for a school staff luncheon on Friday - which meant chopping up six cucumbers, six peppers, a dozen or so tomatoes, some onions and assorted herbs. That took a lot longer than we had foreseen, but it was a lot of fun to hang out in the kitchen together.

Second, Cheryl, as part of her meal-planning, decided to make some frozen meals for the upcoming weeks, so we spent some of our evening yesterday putting those together, and then we had one for dinner, too. It was very yummy! And probably tasted better because we felt very accomplished.

One of the dishes was a simple Baked Rigatoni and the other was what we call "Fake Lasagna" -- actually a Three Cheese Pasta dish with meat. Put that together with some salad and a fresh loaf of bread (I recommend garlic bread) and you've got a great meal!

Best part was -- I got to clean up! That's my favorite part of cooking. Aside from eating, of course.

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Spiders don't really belong in bathtubs

We haven't used our soaking tub in a long time, and I feel bad about that. There's a little voice in my head -- no, make that a HUGE voice -- that screams every time I think about taking a soak in the tub simply because the amount of water it takes to fill the thing is incredible. And my ears are very sensitive to the creaking and groaning of the house as weights shift across the joists, and my over-active imagination creates mental pictures of the house collapsing from the weight of all that water.

So we have this tub just sitting there, doing nothing. And I've been wanting to build a cover to go over it for at least the last fifteen years, like those covers that go over hot tubs which sit outside on people's decks, but haven't done it yet because there are so many far more important projects hanging over my head.

And then there are these spider plants that we've kept in the bathroom for oh so many years which have been barely managing to survive even though they get lots of humidity from all the water splashing around from the faucets and the shower. Unfortunately, we've had difficulty keeping them upright and they've been knocked over several times and I really hate cleaning up potting soil out of the carpet.

So I found this corner shelving piece that wasn't being used and placed it in the corner of the tub (with a humidifier to weigh down the far end) and they've been doing rather well there. If for some reason the humidity drops too low, I can kick on the humidifier. The two corner windows above let in plenty of shaded light -- not too much! -- and they stay nice and warm -- but not too warm! -- and I'm hoping they will survive long enough for me to have the time to put in a proper cover so that I can not have to worry about them.

But I'll worry just the same. It's my job.