It was quite a shock when I looked out the back door last night and saw branches from the pine tree hanging over the deck and scraping against the house and door. The snow was heavy and wet, and though there was a forty mile an hour wind, the branches barely moved loaded down as they were with piles of snow. I got worried about the huge branches near the door and went out with my broom and started whacking the closest branches with the metal part of the broom. The snow was knocked off the branches onto my head and down the neck of my sweatshirt. Of course it was. The branches were right over my head. I have no idea why that shocked me. It was inevitable. As I was whacking, I nearly fell a couple of times because the snow on the deck was so slippery. I did the best I could and then went inside. Twenty minutes later I looked and the branches were again drooping on the deck so out I went with the broom and whacked the branches yet again, and I got wet, again. I was Sisyphus with snow and a broom instead of a rock.

We got about 8″ of heavy, icy snow. I walked across what used to be a lawn to get my papers though walking doesn’t quite describe the trek. Plodding and tiring do as the snow had drifted and was just a bit below my knees. I had to slam the snow top with my feet to make a path. On the way back I walked in the same steps I had made and thought of Danny in the maze in The Shining doing it to hide from his crazed father. When I got into the house, I couldn’t see. The sun on the snow is so bright I was blinded for a bit. I called Skip and warned him about the branch resting on my deck. He didn’t sound enthused.

Only half of my street is plowed, that would be the other half, the one not near my house.