O Iowa, my frozen, ice wasteland

The law of averages - we had a really mild winter...until the last couple of weeks!

So this morning, we had several inches of heavy, wet snow.  I gave it an hour or two thinking church might be cancelled, then went out to shovel.  (We start at 1:30 right now.)  Just your normal shoveling, much less snow than the last go-round so it was more pushing it to the sides than actual lifting and tossing. 

About an hour later, I hear a snow blower that sounds quite close to my house.  So I peak out the window to see that my home teacher loaded up his blower and trundled over to my house to do my driveway.  I guess since he was here, even though the front was done, he decided to do the back part - I never bother, particularly with this snowfall when we have warmer weather in the near forecast.  I missed exactly what happened, but somehow after he got the blower off the trailer, the truck started to slide down the hill or something.  I'm half way up a dead end hill with a turnaround at the top, and for reasons unknown to me he decided it would be best to try to get all the way up the hill and turn around rather than just backing down to the flat part.  (Of course, I seem to recall my dad chewing me out for backing down to a flat part while learning to drive a stick, so what do I know?)  Oh, I know what I know - my hill is just ridiculously impossible to get up, even with 4WD, until it has been plowed.

20 minutes later, this poor lovely man who is just trying to serve, has left his trailer all askew at the top of the hill and driven the truck back to the bottom.  He then spent all of 10 minutes blowing my driveway - literally, the part of it I do not use - and has to get his truck attached back to his trailer.  I kid you not, it was a 30-minute exercise in ridiculousness.  Now he not only has to get up to the top of the hill, but he has to back close enough to the trailer to get it hitched up.  And his truck is just sliding all over the place.  And I couldn't just leave him out there alone, even though I freely admit I was no help at all.  "We" finally got it hitched up (I did help with lifting/maneuvering the trailer, and wedging rocks under the tires since he was afraid the added weight would send the whole thing sliding down the hill.  And at 12:30, he finally had that snow blower loaded onto the hitched up trailer and was headed home to get ready for church - remember, that starts at 1:30, and he lives around 25 minutes from both me and the church.

We had horrible attendance, because we have people drive in quite a ways, the roads were bad, and there was more snow in the forecast.  I have to confess, I was surprised we didn't cancel.  Or sort of didn't cancel.  At the end of sacrament meeting, the bishop announced that the rest of the block would be cancelled so people could get home given the snow had started up again - I'd guess a half inch while we were in church, and it was supposed to get heavier.  And guess who didn't make it for sacrament meeting after the snow blowing disaster, but faithfully came for the 2nd and 3rd (now non-existent) hours?  You guessed it - my poor home teacher!

I think I will have to make him something really good to make up for the trouble - even though in reality this is truly an "it's the thought that counts" service, because we both ended up miserable over the whole thing (me for the trouble he went to for nothing, him for not getting here before I did it myself and for the cold, wet hitching up experience).  Not only did I have the functional part shoveled already, but it has since snowed enough more that I will need to get back out and shovel again tomorrow anyway.  Or maybe not - since it's spring break, I might just consider myself housebound until it melts on it's own.  (That really ticks off the mailman, though!)

The "good" news - since it was "spring ahead" today I had lots of light to enjoy the snowy landscape!