If God meant for us to shovel snow, we’d have shovels instead of hands!

If you’re at all familiar with what’s been going on in the Buffalo Niagara region lately, you probably already know why I took an unplanned hiatus from blogging this week: Lake Erie decided this was a good time to remind people in this area of its presence.

Cue…the lake-effect snowstorm.

And then…the next lake-effect snowstorm.

As storms go, this one was not as bad as some of the more famous ones we’ve suffered lately…but that’s like saying “I dropped a brick on two of my toes, which isn’t as bad as when I dropped one on my entire foot.”

Plus, for several days I was literally home completely alone, except for Carla and the two cats (Remy and Rosa). This is because The Wife and The Daughter had to take Hobbes (the greyhound) to a specialty vet in Pittsburgh. (No, I haven’t written about this yet, I don’t think. I’ll get to it. He’s OK, but it’s a process.)

So there was lots of shoveling at home, and then I’d get to work, where, as The Store’s resident facilities coordinator, I…got to shovel more. I don’t write much about my day job here, but this photo is representative of the day I had on Thursday (after missing Wednesday completely due to a driving ban and The Store being closed):

And that was just one of the many shoveling tasks I had to do. This is not a complaint: it’s the job I signed up for, and this was an unusual event, even if the rest of the world thinks that this is just what Buffalo Niagara is like every year from October 15 to June 1. For all my complaining, whining, and shouting at the clouds that I did this week, I would still take this over worrying about earthquakes and annual wildfires. I would still take this over having to plywood up my house’s doors and windows in advance of the approaching hurricane. I would still take this over enduring rolling blackouts in very cold months and in very hot ones because my state’s electrical grid is basically a bunch of extension cords patched together and nobody is fixing it because my state keeps electing governors who want to punish brown people, trans people, and women before doing anything productive like modernizing the state’s infrastructure. (Yes, I am calling out Texas.)

(By the way, I did have help in getting all of this done! This was not a case of “Wow, we got several feet of snow, off you go, dude! Let us know when you’re done!” And yes, liberal use of a snowblower was involved.)

So, things were hectic and demanding this week, and in a way that left me with very little mental energy for posting here. Or edditing. Or writing at all. Or doing photography, beyond the occasional cellphone pic of “Holy shit, look at all the snow.”

Because seriously…Holy shit, look at all the snow!