The cold aftermath of the blizzard

My arms feel rubbery, like I have no strength in them.  In fact, I don't think I do have any strength in them.  Two days of shoveling heavy, wet snow when you're not used to it is hard on the muscles for sure.  Zach is doing better than I am but his back is bothering him, too.  Mine is really hurting so as soon as I'm offline, which will be fairly soon, I'm going to grab the hot water bottle and go to bed with my friend, Tramadol.  And when the pain subsides, I'll knit some more.  It looks like I need more than one pair of mittens/flaps because after shoveling my mittens were soaked.  And cold.  Yes, it's acrylic.  So I picked up some more yarn so Zach and I can have two pairs each.  Besides, I picked a color that matches the hat I'm knitting for myself.

I did the Christmas shopping today.  I always buy my own and let Zach wrap it and give it to me because Tom is a last minute shopper and gives me stuff he would like to own instead of things I would like to own. And tends to buy whatever is left on the shelves on Christmas Eve.  I'm used to it by now.  Which is why I buy my own gifts.

I also got Zach's gifts today, too, which was tricky with him along.  I sent him out to the car when I was done and then just grabbed the stuff I was getting him.  I made sure to put the stuff away so he doesn't know.  It looks like we'll have stuff under the tree after all.

That is, if I've got wrapping paper.  I'm not entirely sure that I have any.

We still have more shoveling to do in order to free the garbage can and tomorrow night is the night we set out the trash.  I think I'll be ready to cry by tomorrow night.  Tom believes Zach should have to shovel all of it by himself but I pointed out to him that when he was growing up he had 5 brothers and sisters to share all the chores with and Zach gets dumped on with all the jobs no one else wants to do, so I will help him do them because I don't think it's fair to expect him to shovel all that snow by himself.  And it's a lot of snow.  As I said, our entire driveway is three foot drifts. 

I will admit that Tom does put in an incredible number of hours at work for which he gets a pay cut that he hasn't fully recovered so it's not that I expect him to spend the few hours he gets at home out working back-breaking labor. 

French bread pizza tonight for supper because I just can't do more standing around tonight.  It was bad enough walking around shopping.  I had to sit down a couple of times and pushing the heavy cart (a bag of salt for the water softener in there plus all the other shopping) across a parking lot of packed snow was also a back breaking task.

Driving was crazy because it was too cold for the salt to kick in so all we had were packed snowy roads and ice where the snow had melted the night before.  I drove about 30 mph all the way there and back and one idiot whipped around me going about 60 with a truck bearing down in the oncoming lane.  Then on the way home people coming toward me kept flashing their bright lights at me right when they got to me.  I didn't have my brights on so I don't know what their problem was.  Then the guy behind me got in the act and started flashing his brights in my rear view mirror.  I'm definitely not leaving the house for a few days.

I can't stand it anymore so I'm off to throw my pizza in the toaster oven, fill up the water bottle and crawl into my pajamas and await pizza.  I'll try not to think about shoveling snow tomorrow.  If I do, I'll just start crying.

TTFN