Am becoming one about the weather. Schools were still closed here today, and nothing much in the way of snow, disappeared over night, so decided that around 1 pm would start the digging out process. I actually like shoveling snow. Hate vacuuming, but snow shoveling is satisfying because you can see what you have accomplished. And for 2 hours I accomplished a lot. 3 driveways, 3 cars cleaned off, 3 front porches cleared and a thumb and ring finger blister to show for it. Apparently no one in this neighborhood has heard of this new fangled plastic convenience called: snow shovel. Myself and other neighbors I observed are all using metal garden shovels. Hello! Not only is the snow wet and heavy, but the metal has its own weight. I don’t know if it’s because they think it doesn’t snow here, or a conservative mindset of what works in the garden, is fine for winter, or maybe it is about the use of plastic. These shovels do make a very specific sound however, up and down the street, as the metal scrapes over the pavement as the snow is scooped up. My shovel rang the longest. I rather like the sound. What occurs when shoveling for a length of time is: introduction to every dog being walked, watching the cars spin up the street, and last but not least, the conversation engagers. The best one was the knowledgeable male who asked which number ‘precious’ is. The worst, was ‘Will’ in his SUV who stopped right next to my shoveling to tell me that he ‘Wanted me to know that God loves me and is …. ‘ and on he went. At first, I followed my fine upbringing and listened, but after about 3 minutes, when he did not offer to help me shovel, or take me to the grocery store, but only wanted to save my soul, I returned to shoveling… he continued talking at me. Graciously I explained to his comments about how touched he was about this war movie he watched, that I was a pacifist. Then when he shifted to my spiritual life, I explained that I had had 13 years of a parochial education and then a lifetime of experiences and that I had figured out that god wasn’t really too interested in a whole lot of things about which he Will might think he was. [I believe he may still be trying to make sense of that.] When he said “Well God he….’ I said, ‘You know, you lost me right there with the word god and the pronoun ‘he’. He drove off. Later one of the neighbors whose driveway I did, came out and said, ‘Saw you were talking to Will. Notice he didn’t offer to shovel for you.’ ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘Noticed a few lapses myself’. ‘Oh’ she says ‘Many neighbors when they see him coming, go back in their house.’ Apparently he is not batting 1000 for his heavenly reward.
Now the temperature is on the rise, so cleared is not freezing over. In fact the weather report is for rain not only for the next 12 hours, but for the next six days. This is where the ‘creator’ concept begins to fail for me. We have had four days of snow, which shut the city down. Now we will have six [6] days of rain [according to the forecast] that will eventually wash the snow away. If ‘creator’ wanted to transfer liquid from above to below, just go with rain. The populous here can handle the rain, and in the end, rain is what it is going to be, only now with two intermittent days of the worst slush imaginable!
see forecast: www.oregonlive.com/weather/index.ssf?portland-or#incart_special-report