Why Do I Live Here?

 My daughter, Josephine, just turned 3 years old at the beginning of March. That was a very happy time. The weather was warm and the days were getting longer. We had beaten winter. Heat Miser had won (I've never seen the movie that Heat Miser is in, nor do I know the plot. I'm assuming he probably preferred summer to winter? I don't know but I'm sticking with it). In fact, we actually had a pool party for Josie's birthday. An indoor pool party, of course, but a pool party nonetheless. 

This piece isn't actually going to have anything to do with the party, but the fact that Josie turned 3 is relevant. Cut to yesterday: we just got 6ish inches (I'm horrible at estimating) of snow. And not just any snow, but the really heavy kind that someone with an electric snow blower hates because an electric snow blower can't blow that snow very effectively. I, unfortunately, have an electric snow blower. So out I went with my shovel, just to get the end of the driveway where the snow plows create a snow wall. Have you ever seen Game of Thrones? That's the kind of wall I'm talking about, and it's at the end of my driveway. When I've got that cleared, my back is starting to ache a bit, but I noticed both neighbors had cleared the sidewalk in front of their houses, which means I have to clear the sidewalk in front of my house. And if I'm going to clear the sidewalk, I'm going to clear the walkway up to my house. And if I clear the walkway up to my house, I'm going to shovel a path through my yard for the mailperson to walk through. It's a real "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" situation but with far less cookies and probably a lot less joy, too.

That, also, was mostly background information. Cut to this morning: I open my garage door and notice that all my hard work had been outdone by mother nature (and probably Snow Miser, too, now that I think about it). No worries - this is pretty light snow. The kind of snow that makes someone with an electric snow blower feel smug because an electric snow blower can blow that snow with the best of the gas snow blowers. So I'm feeling pretty smug on my drive to work, but also a little terrified because the roads are terrible. My bosses are actually surprised I showed up and send me home early. I finish up a few things for work and decide it's time to go move some snow around, which won't be an issue because it's light. I start at the end of the driveway with a shovel again because that snow wall is back. It's very heavy and my back has not recovered from yesterday, so I'm struggling after a very short time. Once completed, I put the shovel away, grab the snow blower, and plug it in. I start it up, take a step out of the garage, and the snow blower turns off. That doesn't bode well for me. We've hardly moved any snow. Maybe the outlet is bad, so I switch outlets. No dice. It is then that I notice the cord is frayed and just barely holding together. "Do I have electrical tape?" I ask myself. "Certainly not...but maybe?" So I go and look. Again, no dice. And no electrical tape, either. But I do have painters tape! And what is snow blowing if not painting the yard with snow? I tape up the cord, nice and tight, plug the snow blower back in and...nothing. I've lost. I stare out at my snow covered driveway and say aloud, "I hate it here." After a good stretch of the back, I trudge out with my shovel and ask myself, "Why do I live here?"

"Oh, yeah, because I have two kids and a legally binding agreement splitting custody of them, and moving far away would make my time with them decrease dramatically, and I don't want that." Circling back to Josie turning 3: "In 15 years, I'm outta here." I think, as I slowly push snow from one side of my driveway to the other. Now, you may be thinking, "But Joe, wouldn't that be hard for your kids if you moved from the only town they've known as home as soon as the youngest graduated high school?" Listen here: my parents did the exact. Same. Thing. And I turned out okay! Well, "okay" might be a stretch, but it's not because my parents moved. You may also be thinking, "This seems like something you do when you retire...why don't you just wait until then?" That's a great point! The only problem is that I probably will never be able to retire so, you know, I can't wait until then.

This is actually very exciting for me because A. I've never had a long term plan before. Like, the farthest ahead I've planned was, "If I eat now, I won't be hungry for dinner. Maybe just a snack then?" and B. I'm not a very good planner. That probably explains part A quite a bit, actually. Now, do I know where I'm going to move? Certainly not. It's pretty tricky because I'd be moving to escape the snow, but I also don't like hot. I also love snow at Christmas. It's a lot to think about, and pretty daunting. Especially when I consider how much I hate moving.

Maybe I should just get a new snow blower.

 

From Brookings, With Love

On Thursday of this past week, I finished my final exams for the last semester of my junior* year. I was pretty excited, but instantly faced with a daunting task. My dad wasn't driving out to Brookings with the van or truck to get my stuff and there was no way all of the stuff would fit into my car. Consequently, I rented a storage unit. The daunting task, then, was that I had to move all of my stuff, mostly by myself. My plan was to move it all on Friday and, depending on when that got done, go home either Friday evening or Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it rained all day Friday, so I couldn't move anything. The new plan was the same as the old one, but moved up one day. I woke up Saturday morning and noticed it was raining again. Early in the afternoon, it stopped, and I began moving some things to my storage unit. I had a few things with which I needed help, though, like my desk, my fridge, and my bed. "The desk and fridge will fit in my car," I said, audibly, to myself, because no one else was home. "I need Krsnak's Suburban for my bed, though." Mike Krsnak was one of my roommates. I waited until 6:00 for Krs to get home from work. We loaded my bed into his Suburban and then carried my desk out to my car. "Are you sure this'll fit in your car?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah - it'll fit." I was pretty confident because I had measured my back seat and the desk, and it worked out. Unfortunately, I'm no architect. I tried my best to force that desk into my back seat, but the desk was having none of that. We left the desk out, grabbed my fridge and packed it in my back seat, and drove over to the storage unit. While unloading my bed and fridge, I noticed that the sky began to look ominous again. I got a little nervous because I remembered we left my desk outside. We got back to the house, loaded the desk into Krsnak's Suburban, and drove back to the unit without a single drop of rain falling.

When I got back to the house, it was time to pack up all of my belongings that I was taking home with me. For some reason, my dad wanted me to bring my dresser home instead of just bringing all of my clothes home. I had kept all of my clothes in a giant duffel bag last year, and that worked out just fine. I took out all of the drawers and carried the dresser out to my car. I had measured my dresser, too, and decided it would fit into my back seat. Like the desk, though, the dresser had other plans, and they did not involve the back seat of my car in any way. A bit distraught, I thought I'd try to fit the dresser in the trunk of my car. No dice, but I thought I could close the trunk enough where a bungee cord would do the job. At that moment, my other roommate, Ryan Ackman, drove up and looked skeptically at the dresser in my trunk. I told him it wouldn't fit in the back seat, but he didn't accept that. He eventually got the dresser into the back seat, and as soon as he did, the thunder and lightning started. I spent the next twenty minutes sprinting in and out of my house, trying to move the rest of my stuff into my car and have a farewell conversation with Ackman simultaneously before it started to rain. I'm still impressed with myself that I managed to fit everything into my car. Before I left, Krsnak said that we were in a tornado warning. "Ha, maybe you are, but I'm leaving. No tornadoes or thunderstorms for me," I thought.

*Though this year was my third at college, I'm hesitant to call it my "junior" year, because I'm not graduating after next year. As far as graduation is concerned, this year was my freshman year.