Eat your heart out, Canada.

Along with the rest of the civilized world I have been tuning in every so often to watch the Olympics and listen to the announcers say, with absolute sincerity, "Such dedication and inner strength!  What a warrior!  She embodies the peak of humanities dreams and all that we stand for as a species!"  for someone who has strapped long sticks to her feet and slid down a remarkable steep hill.  Appropriate?  Not really.  I mean, don't get me wrong, those Olympians are amazing athletes, but 'warriors' may be pushing it a bit.  I think the announcers should say, "Now that is some fast skiing!" and leave it at that.

But I digress.  The reason that Canada should eat its (her?) heart out is that while the Olympians are struggling to control their skis on icy slopes, we got ELEVEN INCHES of snow yesterday.  Here's a picture of our driveway  Yes, the ruler shows a bit under 9", but when I shoveled that part I found that the ruler had been sitting on top of at least 2" of ice. 

 

And it was good skiing snow too.  Not to slushy.  Lindsey Vonn would love it. 

And then after shoveling for AN HOUR AND A HALF to get our driveway clear, I don't know that I really helped matters much.  The aforementioned ice was impervious to the thin plastic snow shovel I had, so instead of nice fluffy snow we now have a driveway of life-and-limb-endangering ice.  Again, in the spirit of the Olympics, it is a bit like an ice skating rink.  Apolo Anton Ohno could come to my driveway and do a 10 meter super-short track speed skating race.  It would be especially exciting since he would have to dodge traffic on our street once he crossed the finish line. 

And while I won't idolize the Olympians, it is true that there are some significant differences between them and myself: 

1) Olympians struggle through pain and failure and trials to finish their sport.  I just got the driveway to this point...

...spent about an eighth of an second wrestling with myself about trying to do a better job then gave up, went inside and got some hot chocolate.  (In my defense, please remember that the bottom 2 inches was ice nestled down snugly in between the pieces of gravel that make up our drive way.)

2:  Olympians are in good shape.  I thought I'd better hop on and blog about my shoveling quickly before all my muscles seize up and I can not move.  I'm fairly sure that while sitting here I have lost the use of everything below my mid-back.