My mom’s side of the family are hard working, rabble-rousing, hardscrabble individuals.   They work hard and play hard.  Their motto is the oh-so overused:  “When the going gets tough, the tough get going. ”

When I came into the world, I immediately put a stop to all that.  My motto quickly became:  “I’m tired.  Find someone else to do it.  Or even better, let’s hire it done.”

My cousins were forever livid at me because I somehow managed to avoid “walking the beans” for my entire adolescence.  If you’re not familiar with that term, let me enlighten you.   Walking beans requires its victim to painstakingly traipse up and down endless rows of green beans and pull weeds.  I liken it to the Bataan Death March.  Inevitably, the heat would be well over 100 degrees.  You’d get paid pennies and be eaten alive by pestilence.  And each time you’d pull a weed out of the parched soil, another one would immediately pop up to mock you.  Every year, I’d somehow get out of it.  One year I had a doctor’s note saying I was allergic to my own sweat.  The next year I purposefully broke my big toe.  And so it went.

I had an aversion to any sort of manual labor.   I abhorred mowing the grass.  Forget taking out the trash.  And God forbid I had to shovel the walk when the snow fell.

Well, you could have knocked my dad over this morning when I offered to snow blow the drive.  After a quick lesson on HOW to snow blow a drive, I was off and churning.

Every thing was going smoothly until I somehow got the snow blower off the beaten path and into the gravel.  Suddenly the snow blower became a weapon of mass destruction.  I think I put out a squirrel’s eye.

Happens.

Ever since I had my stroke, I’ve decided to try new things.  And lemme tell you, blowing snow is now one of them.  My dad smartly invested in new machinery this year and it works like a charm.  Lots of horsepower means I barely have to do anything.  I just stand there and the machine propels itself forward.  That can be somewhat problematic.  I let go of the snow blower a couple times to file my nails.

Oops.  Happens.

I’m sitting here typing this and the snow is STILL falling.  Looks like Round II of Man Vs. Machine is on tap for this afternoon.   Can’t wait.  (And just so we’re clear … because I like blowing snow does not mean I want ANY part of bean walking this summer.)