SHOVEL BUYING

While most Targets are SORT OF laid out the same, Targets in California don’t sell a LOT of snow shovels, so I had to go looking. When I saw what I thought were them down an aisle, I walked down there and went past a woman with a baby in a shopping basket. As I walked by I thought:

“Hm. That looks like Stephanie and Fiona. But they live in Amherst so it can’t be…”

And then I stopped.

Oh. Yeah. Reality check.

This was going to take awhile. Right. We had moved. Check.

Luckily, Stephanie, who we had seen just a few weeks before when we were looking for a rental, was just as surprised to see us. We chatted for a bit and then chose our snow weapons.

They had a snow shovel with a cooked handle that they called “ergonomic”. Now I’ve looked it up since and I guess it means that it’s easier to shovel because it has a crooked handle. It’s also designed as a “pusher”[1], but I’d been taken in by that before. Still, it looked like the best bargain and we got two of those and one smaller, regular type shovel for Connor.

A quick pass by the fifty percent off Christmas decorations…

…well, it wasn’t really a quick pass. I missed my decorations and wouldn’t have minded more.

And we headed back.

The kids, having never seen snow, didn’t really know what to do. I, having not shoveled since I learned to shave[2], was more than a little rusty. And I’d never done a driveway this big. The snow was shallow enough that you could push it most of the way and I started them at one end of the driveway and I started at the other. A couple of times I saw them pulling a Laurel and Hardy and one dumping snow directly in the other’s path. Connor had an overabundance of ambition and he’d toss snow over his shoulder, shoveling madly away and totally unaware that he was throwing more snow in his own path. The sun was shining and they were actually laughing.

I wanted them to have a good time. I didn’t want chores to be like the labors of Hercules[3] or like a prison sentence. If it wasn’t fun, I at least didn’t want it to be onerous or to have them forced into it because I might have a heart attack. No, better to hold that for things like dating and driving. I also didn’t want to criticize too much or make them think I didn’t appreciate what they were doing.

And the comedy was a little too good.

That is, until I went to try to give them some pointers and Connor threw snow on me. Twice.

I did a Moe Howard slow burn, but didn’t explode.

The best part about shoveling snow is the coming inside again. Resting in front of a warm, roaring fire and having some hot cocoa.

But we didn’t have any of that.

We hadn’t gone to the grocery store yet.

So that was the next trip.


[1] On a side note, they also sell a shovel that looks suspiciously like a “barn shovel” but I take it that it’s designed to have a smaller blade to lessen the chance that you’ll hurt yourself by lifting too much snow. This mean that it was likely designed by people who have never seen snow, or they would know that it comes in different weights at different times and different temperatures. They would also know that no one like a wimpy shovel. And that their was designed for shoveling shit.

[2] My back.

[3] And I really want a good shit shoveling reference in here to tie things together.

Entire contents Copyright 2010 by Shaun McLaughlin

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