Snow Blower Woman

Today I ran the snow blower for the first time.  It was the first time we needed the snow blower (thank goodness) AND it was the first time I ever experienced the thrill of plowing through deep snow and launching it into outer space.  Well, not outer space, but out of the space that it was in, into another space where its existence was more convenient.

I loved it!  It was fun, as the pic below will illustrate.  I especially loved that I was operating heavy machinery and it was totally do-able and I felt competent at it.

Little backstory about me and heavy machinery.

For years, decades even, we rented houses.  Houses with lawns. Some of these lawns were vast.  We’re talking acres.  Some of these “lawns” were slopey. Steeply slopey.  And all of these lawn/slopes needed to be mowed thousands of times every summer.

Every rental house had a beast of a mower.  Mowers that took hundreds of yanks on the cord to start. Mowers that would stall and sputter and die.  And in all of these rentals I was the designated mower.  I yanked. I changed spark plugs. I filled and re-filled gas tanks. I almost lost limbs going up and down slopes that would rival what we’ve been seeing this week in Vancouver.

I was in charge of the mowing. Because mowing was hard and I am good at hard.

Then we bought a house, and the man bought a fancy John Deere riding mower for himself and declared himself “King of the Lawn.”

I was told I was not allowed to touch the mower.  He hid the keys even.  So after all those years of mowing by hand all those bitch lawns, I wasn’t “allowed” to ride the John Deere.  That was the “man’s machine.”

Needless to say, no man tells me what I am “allowed” to do anymore.  I do what I please.  And today it pleased me to start up a snow blower and clear the driveway.

Fun!