Does anyone have a coconut bra? ’cause I’m going to need it. For non-New Englanders, you may have heard in the news that the east coast got hit with a major blizzard, the “Nemo” storm, last weekend. For fellow New Englanders, you may still be digging yourself out. With a name like the fish, it sounds almost cute; but believe me, it was far from cute.
I was scheduled to work the entire day Saturday, and by Friday night, the snow had already started coming down hard. I contacted my manager, who said as of that moment we were still planning on operating normal hours on Saturday. Me: Are you serious?! Toward the end of the night, our street and the surrounding streets lost power – power, stove, heat, all gone. Me: There’s a blizzard, I have no power, it’s below 30 degrees in my house, and we’re working normal hours tomorrow? Are you serious?!
Now, I don’t leave for work until about 8:30, but I woke up at 5 in the morning to check out the road conditions. Let’s just say…I couldn’t even find the road. Not only was my car covered, but my driveway was blocked, and the entire street was snowed in.
Well, I thought, there’s no point in shoveling my car out if the street’s not plowed – how far do I plan to get, the end of the driveway? So I went back to bed and set my alarm for 7. Of course, my mind was restless thinking about commuting in that kind of weather, so I couldn’t fall back asleep at all. Long story short, two text messages and 4 hours later, I was told not to come in. Phew!
Not. I spent 5 hours shoveling through 2-3 feet of snow – off my porch, off the porch steps, to clear a path to the car, around the car, to clear the entire driveway, and to clear a path on the sidewalk across the entire front of the house. Considering the shovel is almost as tall as I am, being not even 5′ tall, it was quite a feat.
Normally, shoveling isn’t too bad, because you can run in the house periodically to thaw your frozen digits by the heat; but when your house is in equilibrium with the temperature outside, being indoors is really no consolation. I literally turned on the hot water in the shower and ran my fingers and toes under it to thaw.
By nighttime Saturday night, I was so cold my body wouldn’t stop violently shivering. I had on pjs, a giant hoodie, a fleece bathrobe, and 2 socks on EACH foot, and I was curled up under a thick fleecy blanket and I was still shivering. It got so cold inside I could see my own breath when I talked.
Within the week since the Nemo storm, we’ve had two more incidences of snow. The first was yesterday morning – light flurries of snow. The second is going on today – 8 inches of accumulation. As a person who dreads driving in general, not to mention driving in snow, I think it’s about time I do a snow dance to stop Mother Nature.
Years ago, on Nickelodeon’s “Ned’s Declassified,” the students did a rain dance to stop the rain to get out of playing dodgeball indoors. A couple years ago, on WB’s “Gilmore Girls,” Lorelai Gilmore claimed to have done a dance with a coconut bra to stop the snow in order to postpone the Christmas spirit until her daughter Rory returned home from London. And did it snow? Uh-uh. Not a single flake. Maybe there’s something to this coconut-bra-snow-dance… =)