The minute I thought it—and didn’t have any wood within reach to knock on—I knew I probably shouldn’t have. “Wow,” I said to myself in mid-February, “This has been a great winter so far. Not too cold, not too much snow.” We all know what happened next—a very white Valentine’s Day weekend.

Just when I think I’m all set as a homeowner, new stuff crops up. In this case, the realization that I don’t own a snow shovel. Luckily, my parents live across the street, and they do own a shovel. More importantly, they were willing to lend it to me until I purchase my own.

Fast on the heels of the shovel realization came the fact that I don’t own any snow boots either. I didn’t think this was an insurmountable problem until I went outside in a pair of regular old shoes, and they repeatedly got stuck in the four-foot-high snowdrifts around my house. I kept walking right out of them. This happened three or four times before I finally gave up, decided to save time and trouble, and carried my shoes back inside the house. I did learn, however, that my neighbors are fascinated with eccentricities like a woman walking around in the snow in stocking feet.

So I had to borrow my mother’s snow boots as well, and make a mental note to add boots on my shopping list. For me, anyway, winter’s climbing the charts as one of the most expensive seasons of the year.

So, shovel in hand and boots on feet, I trudged back to my house. I should also mention that I had never in my life shoveled snow. How is that possible? Living in an apartment all of my adult life and a father who actually enjoyed shoveling snow while I was growing up. This was new territory, baby, but I reasoned that if I could pick up skills like lawn mowing and leaf raking in the last six months—also new experiences due to the above reasons—I could certainly shovel some measly snow.

It took me approximately 10 seconds to understand why people complain about snow removal. It doesn’t look like it, but snow is really heavy. I’m fairly young and in fairly decent shape, but it didn’t take more than five minutes for me to begin sweating profusely and consider a dramatic collapse into the piled-high snow. Someone would come looking for me, I was certain, and maybe that someone would have a snow blower.

I surveyed my house and realized, I think for the first time, just how very many walkways I have. Not to mention an inclined gravel driveway, which, at that moment, seemed to be miles long. I decided to persevere, though—at least for the next 15 minutes. After that, I said forget it and prayed for lots of sun in the coming days.

I walked the shovel back over to my parents’ house, and they asked me how my first snow removal had gone. “Terrible,” I replied. “It’s harder than I thought.”

My dad couldn’t understand how my experience could have been so bad, considering the many wonders of this particular snow shovel. “It’s got a coating on it that keeps it from sticking in the snow, and it’s designed to push snow, as well as shovel it,” he explained.

I told him that was all well and good, and I did greatly appreciate the loan, but pushing snow isn’t really an option for a woman of my limited muscle tone who’s faced with a four-foot-high wall of snow.

So I threw out my shopping list with the snow shovel on it and made a new list. It says “snow blower.” TPW