Call Me Ms. Crankypants

So I get home tonight, and the plow has gone by, completely covering the entrance to our driveway. Since I drive a little car, there was no way I could get enough power in 1st gear making a left turn into the driveway to get over that hump.

So I parked in the neighbor's driveway, got the handy-dandy shovel out of my trunk that my parents just bought me last weekend, and got to work. But I soon realized that not only had the plow blocked the entrance to the driveway, but somehow the opening to the driveway, between the two giant heaps of snow, had gotten narrower. This meant I had to not only clear the end of the driveway, but make the hack away at the heaps of snow taller than me in order to widen the entrance.

So here I am, chopping, hacking, huffing, and puffing, and basically getting nowhere. Let's remember that I'm an asthmatic with a bad shoulder here. People are walking by me, clearly struggling, slipping in the muck, and making little progress. No one stops to help. A man in a truck honked at me and yelled, but I'm not sure why. Maybe he was so offended by my ineffective shoveling he felt the need to express his anger? The man across the street came out for a few minutes and was snow blowing. I waved to him, and he looked at me and turned back into the house.

I finally start to make some progress, and that cursed plow goes by again! BOOO!

And here's the kicker. The downstairs neighbor's friend who parks in our driveway and walks to work, but always ignores me (even the time the garage door was open and I couldn't get the release latch myself---I said, "excuse me, could you please help me?" and he didn't even look at me.) came back to get his car. Now the last incident, perhaps I could brush off if he had a hearing problem, but he could clearly see me struggling here, and he walked RIGHT BY. He didn't even acknowledge me. I assumed he would get into his car, try to leave, and realize he would need to get out and help if he ever wanted to leave, because the rate I was going, he was going to be stuck watching me until morning.

But he didn't drive his car down the driveway for another 10 minutes or so. I think he went back behind the house and sat in his car! Is that possible? Would he do that? Then when he finally came out, I was beginning to see progress again. Now he HAS to acknowledge me because I am standing right in his way with a shovel, and I turned around and looked at him.

So he opens the car door and says that he is going to try to get some speed and plow out, and maybe he'd make some tire tracks and I could get into the driveway. Then he gets back in the car. And that is exactly what he does in his big car. He got up some speed and plowed through my hole. And he got out.

Unfortunately, part of his car smashed into one of the hills on the side of the driveway, causing it to partially collapse, once again making the opening too narrow for me to get to. By now I am becoming irate. Why is no one helping me? Would it have killed that man that parks in our driveway to take a couple of shovels full of snow off the driveway? Could that man across the street have offered to help? Or ANY of those people that walked by have stopped?

I FINALLY get the opening big enough and the snow low enough that I think I can get in. So I go for it, and I clear! Then I got stuck on the driveway. I was so mad, I yelled at the car, bounced in my seat and banged on the steering wheel. I had to get out and shovel around the car. Then I had to rock back and forth, and I made almost no progress. This meant I had to take a break for a minute with the car off to fight off tears of frustration. I just wanted to go inside and eat dinner!

Eventually I got up the driveway and into the house, only to discover that my downstairs neighbor had been home the whole time. Maybe he didn't see me shoveling at the end of the driveway, but surely he at least heard me struggling with my car in the driveway?

I was going to do the dishes today, but I think instead I am going to talk a hot bath, do my crossword puzzle, and go to bed early. I feel like Ms. Crankypants right now.


Also, this is a thing: