Can I just say that Wednesday was a sucky day? It was.

It started when we bundled up to start snowblowing (Don) and shoveling snow (me). Don fired up the snowblower. It just couldn’t handle the snow (something I’ve since heard from many people as to this particular blizzard/snow.) He’d get it going and eventually the wheels would spin around and it was impossible to get it through the snow. We had almost two feet and it was very heavy.

So. What do we do now? We have a long driveway that goes uphill. Don called a couple of our neighbors and one suggested a guy who lives down the street. These neighbors were out of town and he was supposed to plow their driveway while they were gone. Price quoted was fifty dollars. We were wary of trying to clear all that snow by ourselves, so we said yes. I went upstairs to do some work. He came and went. When I looked out the bedroom window, I started cursing like a sailor. He had plowed the driveway – badly – and simply stopped. There was now a pile of snow at least five feet high blocking in our cars. I ran downstairs, went outside and asked Don what the heck happened. Apparently his truck (a small one) kept sliding around on the driveway so he really couldn’t do the job. The driveway looked terrible and there was huge pile of snow at the top of the driveway, along with the wall blocking our cars in.

So for the next three hours, Don worked the snowblower (I finally had to make him go in because I was worried about him) and I slowly cleared a five foot tall wall of snow that was about 8 feet long. I cannot tell you how exhausting it was. We took breaks, of course. But it was awful – the worst snow cleanup I can remember.

Yesterday, I had to slowly maneuver my car out of there (his ‘plowing’ effectively eliminated the area that we use to back up when we’re going to go down the driveway) so that Don could get out. It was a pain. Then it took me two tries to get back up the driveway. Meanwhile my neighbor (now back home) called out to me, apologizing about her recommendation. He’d done a bad job on their driveway, too, and there she was shoveling and shoveling and trying to dig her car out and make the driveway passable. To be fair to our neighbor with the plow, he has a small truck and I think it just couldn’t handle snow of this magnitude.

Lesson learned. We’ve had our drive plowed exactly twice since we moved here and both times it was a bust. Of course, this was an extreme event and most snowfalls are far easier to deal with.

But it’s done and salting helped with any extra snow and ice and we’re okay. Tired, but okay.

Don decided to leave on Monday and I can’t tell you how that changed my mood. I was thinking that he was going to leave today but he worked on his itinerary and route yesterday and decided Monday was the day. An enormous relief as he needs to rest before he goes and I get to have a couple more days with him before he has to leave. We’ll both be leaving on Monday – Don for the West Coast and me for some work in NYC.

After two days of no mail delivery, our mail was delivered yesterday. A ‘new’ Nancy Drew arrived, The Mystery at Lilac Inn. Isn’t this a great cover? I love the period clothes and the two shady men in the other room. There’s our Nancy, listening in as she does some sleuthing.

Speaking of Nancy Drew, I picked this up from our post office box – a gift from reader Mary:

Mary is doing some purging and she found this set of Nancy Drew postcards – all of them with different cover art. She wrote to ask if I would like them, and of course, I said yes. Thank you so much, Mary! I love them.

Now we have to get ready for our respective adventures coming up next week.

Happy Friday.