Winter Wonderland, my ass...

If coping with winter was my job, I would have turned in my notice this week. Or, better yet, screamed "I QUIT!!" and stomped out the door.
We've had snow on top of snow, rain on top of snow, snow on top of sleet on top of rain on top of snow, more snow on top of... well, you get the picture.

In case you don't -

The view out to the chicken coop - it's in the lean-to just to right of center. That little gray blotch in the center of the snow? That's the very top of our big galvanized garbage can.

That dark slash? That's the top of the door to the root cellar. I'm glad we didn't put much in there last fall.


And this is the view down my driveway. Or what would be my driveway if we could only drive on it. I've been trudging/shoveling paths since December, when it became impossible to drive up it anymore. You can just make out the path in the center of the picture. It disappears around and down the hill. What you see in the background is the other side of the valley.

In the best of conditions, our driveway is a bitch. It's long, it's steep, and it curves. Add to this the fact that we haven't been able to hang onto a SnowplowGuy for more than one season (and in Vermont, a good SnowplowGuy is more important that a good doctor.) The one we had last year hasn't returned any of our calls. A friend of ours ran into a guy who used to plow for us several years ago (we'd heard that he moved away, but hadn't heard he'd moved back to the area) who showed up once and promptly blew his alternator about a third of the way up the driveway. Though he said he'd be back (after fixing his truck), we haven't seen him since.
By sheer stubbornness, I'd been working my car up a little further each time I drove in (Bless Subaru!), though I'd had to give up that practice when I managed to run aground and had to call my brother-in-law to drag me off the plateau of crusted snow the car was balanced on. (All wheel drive only works when most of the tires are actually in contact with the ground... who knew?)
So, Monday, I needed to run errands, and it was snowing again. Not a surprise. In backing down the driveway, I got hung up in snow 4 times, each time having to dig out packed snow from behind and underneath the car. The snow was so slippery, and the frozen ruts so choppy, that I was lucky to get out at all. It took almost two hours from the time I stepped out my door, until I actually got the car to the end of the driveway. When I got home, I only pulled in a short distance so I wouldn't have to go through that aggravation the next time.
Tuesday. More snow. Not a surprise. After Monday's debacle, I just couldn't face going out again, and put things off until Wednesday, when I had to go out again anyway.
So Wednesday. Winter storm warnings in effect when I got up. The snow was coming down so hard that I couldn't even see across the valley. I watched all morning, then saw it was letting up a little around noon, so I bundled up, did what shoveling I could, and waded through snow down to the car.
Turning the key just got me a little ticking noise instead of that nice 'vroom vroom' sound.

Crap. I quit.

On the plus side, I'm getting a lot of knitting done...