Why Mainers Are So Grumpy

It's amazing what a couple of fractured ribs will do to your life. Basically, they will ruin it. It makes one wonder how Stephen Hawking gets so much done without wallowing in self-pity, which is what I have been doing for the past 10 days. So today I decided to kick the laying-around-sucking-down-Advil habit and get back to the land of the living, the land of the get-up-and-going. To that end, I set out for the post office, albeit in my car since the eight or nine inches of new snow we got yesterday from winter storm Rex or Pax or whoever that was made walking out of the question.

So I slid behind the wheel, which was quite a feat in itself, backed out of the garage, and drove the 6/10ths of a mile to the post office. Then I carefully went inside, got my mail, and drove back home, excited to have actually done something without further injury. Sadly, during my short absence the town plow had come along and created a two-foot wall of freshly-plowed snow blocking our driveway, which offers the only access into our house. Under normal circumstances I would have grabbed the nearest snow shovel and dug my way in, but alas, that was not possible with my busted ribs.

The plow was still visible, so I flagged it down and pointed out the problem to the driver. The funny thing was, he wasn't at all apologetic, as if what he had done was perfectly appropriate and not at all inconsiderate. Like, what if I had gotten home five minutes later and he was gone and I was pregnant or on crutches or worse, had no legs at all, or had six bags of groceries and a sick St. Bernard to get inside the house? Anyway, none of these were the case, and once he got off the phone with his girlfriend he agreed to help. Nevertheless, after all his fussing with his blades and backing up and going sideways, he still left behind a sizable hump that my low-to-the-ground Saab can just barely scale. By tonight the hump will be a major hill, since it's snowing hard, and that plow will be back for sure.

It doesn't matter though, because I'm staying home until spring.