I have long been intimately familiar with something that we call around here a, “corn scoop”.   I would happily find you a picture, but nothing on Google even comes up with something that looks similar, so let’s suffice to say — a wide, long, deep aluminum shovel.   Useful for scooping corn (imagine that) if you’re into that sort of thing, but also incredibly handy for clearing piles of snow when you have few other means to do so.

That is, until today.

Kindly feast your eyes upon this beauty of machinery and testosterone — the Murray Blizzard 27″ Snowblower:

Powered by an 8HP Tecumseh 4-cycle engine, it is to snow what a T-Rex is to brontosauri.    Rip, chew, and spit 40 yards off.    It has an electric start, a bunch of fun levers and cranks to shift the chute around, and a headlight. That’s right, folks, I can blow snow IN THE DARK.    If that doesn’t say, “manpower”, I don’t know what does.

My father and stepmother apparently have had enough of our driveway resembling the ice planet Hoth and being barely navigable if you don’t own a snowmobile.  When he heard an ad on the radio for a used snowblower in good condition, he jumped on it and I basically got a slightly late Christmas present.     I could have kissed his boots, but my lips would have frozen to them in the -10F weather.

Being parents on a single income and all that jazz, something luxurious like a blower wasn’t really in our near-time budget as we have larger and more important fish to dunk in hot oil, so up until now, me and Mr. Corn Scoop have had a very good relationship, but his capabilities coupled to my arms, legs, and back have limited range and ability and I’ve kept to the minimum required for mobility given that there is some 15″ of white crap in many places around the yard.

In short order after coming over today, Dad and I hauled to it and got my entire driveway, around all cars and even the junk car, as well as a copious path to the garage, neatly cleared out.   I even put ice melt on the steps — imagine!    The blower does a superb job and is fun as hell to run given that I’m not doing the work.

I’m not entirely sure how to thank my father and Amy for the gift enough because it Kicks Some Serious Ass and it’s going to be immensely useful, but I am very, very grateful.

I leave you with an image of myself having some darn good entertainment telling that stupid snow exactly where to go.    Enjoy.

When I was a child, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree was a family tradition that we did each year, consisting of bundling up, traveling an hour or so to a tree farm, and spending the next four hours hiking amongst the 70 acres of carefully cultivated holiday shrubbery until we had narrowed the field of 187,322 trees to that one, special, Tree-of-All-Trees that the angels endorsed, poets lamented, and would fit within both our living room and my parents’ budget.    We’d hack it down with an old-fashioned hand saw (because we love the manual labor) and hoof it back across the tundra to the car.    The balance of the day was then spent thawing our limbs, dragging the tree inside, and after decorating it, spending the next 7 hours picking needles out of the shag.

It was…memorable.

Ontop of this, I would then spend the next month or so sneezing my ass off everytime I was in the house because, as it would have it, I am allergic to pine trees.   (My personal hell is filled with wreaths.) However, I loved them so much (or so I thought) that I put up with it and simply walked around in a Benadryl-fueled haze for the majority of the season.    No wonder the holidays were always so jolly!

These days I’ve forgone the drug-enhanced fun of real trees for the less-nasally-frictive practice of putting up a fake tree that does a reasonable job of approximating The Tree and saves the family a small fortune in Kleenex.    However, we wanted my son to have the family bonding fun of hiking the wooded wilderness in preparation for Christmas (it serves as a penance for sins, I figure), so we took him along when Grandpa and Amy went to locate their shrub of choice.

The below is the resulting photologue of the day, which was terribly nice (completely unlike the arctic temps I was subjected to in my childhood) and lovely lighting for photography.     Keston had a blast.

This weekend saw me spending a lot of time either being with my father or being a father which, if you consider, seems somewhat appropriate given the nature of the holiday.

For the past couple weekends, Dad and I have been spending long hours replacing the old roof of his house with shiny new brown steel in one of our typical father-and-son construction ventures.   While we can certainly spend time with each other in other venues, this is a very comfortable one for the both of us — doing some work, making something new or better, working in a lockstep learned from years and year of hammering next to each other on a multitude of projects.    I am by no means excellent in my abilities and Dad still retains the Master Carpenter title and is the leading force of the guild, but I know enough not to be a burden anymore.

I was reflecting as I was perched high ontop of a steep and slippery dormer roof two stories up from a certain quick fall and splat that there are few other people in the world who could make me climb that high and perch myself out on a surface that had little-to-no means of barring me from making a very rapid slide to certain doom.     Dad, naturally, has no problem with doing so and climbs around within inches of the precarious edge like a monkey with velcro feet, making me cringe but ever so glad that it was him and not me.    But I had the thought — that’s just like a father, isn’t it?   If it was between myself and my son, I’d hang by my gums from the edge of the steel if it meant that he wouldn’t have to get anywhere near it.

At the same time, I cannot help but think when I put myself in these situations that I should really watch out for my ass because my own son needs me to come home at the end of the day because, really — who else is going to wrestle with him on the carpet and teach him how to discretely stare at boobs?     I find myself doing that a lot, whether it’s perched on some high building, driving fast, or attempting espionage of a foreign government — I really have a desire to come back in one piece when possible.

Speaking of the little squirt, I spent any time I wasn’t on a roof with him, and it was one of the most enjoyable weeekends I’ve had.    He’s been more clingy than usual in the past few days, whether he misses the foreign relatives that left last week, his tooth is bothering him more than normal, or he just feels cuddly, I’ve gotten a lot of run-and-crash-into-my-legs, nearly de-pants Daddy because I want up, or headbutting and giggling while Daddy attempts not to swear loudly.      All these, plus laughing eyes, a bouncy countenance, and soft squishy cheeks has given me endless moments where time could go shag a tree and it was just me and my boy having fun and enjoying being together.

So, I’m thankful and I can say without my normal sarcasm that despite turning out sore and tired from the weekend, I had a good Father’s Day — a solid reminder of how much I enjoy working beside and hanging with my own dad and how absolutely much I adore being a daddy to my little boy.     None of it’s glamorous or glitzy, but it’s real, meaningful, and enjoyable, the way a holiday really should be.

This past Saturday we took off and went to Des Moines and the Blank Park Zoo, a place I had not been to since I was a kid, and at the time simply remember there being a lot of pens with animals inside, so I really didn’t know what to expect — would it be like a fancy farm or like a real zoo?   Would they have anything more exciting than a chicken?

As it turned out, the zoo is a rather nice place these days, having nice paths and landscaping and easy ways to get around to see all the sights.   Unfortunately, the giraffes, which are apparently the stars of the show, were not on display due to some fence-fixing, so we didn’t partake in feeding or seeing them, but that exclusion did garner us a 20% discount, which was nice.

On the whole, the place was…OK.   None of the animals were spectacular, but they were better than your average Holstein.   The environment was very nice, the staff reasonably friendly (for what we interacted with them), and the weather was mint.   I think, all in all, it wasn’t a completely wasted day.

Photo evidence for those of you who read Playboy for the, “articles”:   (click to zoom in!)

The world outside is harsh and cold; winds blow and snow drifts.   People venture forth gently into the chill night to gather at each other’s houses for warmth, friendship, and to take their minds off the daily hum-drum of life.

I am the Scrooge this year; the “bah” in your”humbug” and the dissenter from the happyness of the season.    The hassle outweighs the benefits this year, BUT — read me not wrong, for my heart is not entirely full of dark.

For those I call friends and even to those I do not, I wish you these:  Introspection.   Pause.   Remembrance.    Reflection.   Regret.   Absolution.  Resolve.   Repair.

And hope.

The heart that beats within my cynical chest is still warm, and there is much of me that wishes the best of possible futures for others.    Enjoy your holiday & solstice season and remember that however icy and windswept your reality might be, at least I am cheering for a change.

My best, from mine to yours.

P.S. – I really need a tripod to take high-ISO photos like this one.   I managed to take it by leaning the camera against the doorframe, but golly was it difficult.