Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, aka, The 6 P's

As the Winter progresses I am coming up with a list of things that I want to own BEFORE next Winter begins.......after all, I apparently forgot the 6 P's before THIS winter, a mistake that I will NOT repeat... Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance, after all :)

The first thing on my list is a snowblower. No, we do not have one. Yes, I wish we did this winter. After the 4 bazillionth storm (not quite that many but it felt like it) I went around to stores to try to order one or buy one. One man that owns a hardware store actually started laughing when I asked if he had any. I think he needs to take a vacation as I think he lost his mind :) That or he needs medication, or maybe both....I actually felt a little sorry for him as his laughter was "manic" not "happy" and so I know that he was not looking at any of this in a funny light.....

The second thing on my list is a grass seed spreader. A grass seed spreader you might be asking? Yes, a grass seed spreader....as my driveway is VERY long, I want to make putting down hundreds of pounds of ice melt a little more effective use of my time......my styrofoam coffee cup (not used for coffee anymore just in case you are wondering) dipped over and over and over again into the bag of ice melt and thrown from the garage door is just not cutting it this year.

Automatic delivery of ice melt on demand is my third wish. I want to have a place that I can call, they know who I am, I can say, "More, please" and they deliver it right to my garage and stack the 50# bags inside the door on a little raised pallet. The pallet is in case there is any flooding, the bags will remain dry and the ice melt inside the bag useable :) I am tired of loading up my truck and lugging them home.

The fourth wish is to own a roof rake. Now I must be 100% honest and tell you that I had NEVER HEARD of such a thing until this Winter. I was telling someone, "I have the most BEAUTIFUL icicles on my house!" Actually I was excited to see beautiful icicles, that is of course, until this person told me that icicles are bad things...it means you have ice dams in your gutters and ice dams are bad it turns out. Also I found out that having 3 feet of snow on your roof, though beautiful in a photo, is actually really a bad thing. A roof rake is another item that is impossible to purchase right now in this area. Everyone is sold out. There are waiting lists at hardware stores for them. Who would have ever thought?? LOL Since I had no way to get a roof rake, I did the next best thing.....I found a crew of young men that went onto my slippery snow filled roof and shoveled it off.

A dog sled. This would have been REALLY handy to have this winter. I have the Siberians, I just need the sled. We could have been racing out of the driveway many times this Winter when we were trapped here until the plow came. I had a friend trying to figure out how to airlift us one, but before he could figure it out, we had the massive ice storm and quite frankly the window of opportunity for escape by dogsled was closed :)

Thinking of the ice storm leads to my next wish.... a Bobsled. After the window of opportunity closed on the dogsled escape route, and everything was coated with an inch of solid ice, a bobsled out the hilly driveway would probably have worked. I even have the REALLY high embankments along the WHOLE driveway to keep the Bobsled on the drive when I am banking that baby on the curves! I know that yesterday I had a LITTLE taste of Bobsledding, but unfortunately I was in my Suburban, not a Bobsled as I do not currently own one....just wait til NEXT winter :)

A friend suggested snow shoes. They would have been particularly helpful in the storm that dropped 29" on us. Walking was impossible! The Siberians were "swimming"out there and tunneling and plowing paths....Snow shoes would have allowed me to walk more than 3 steps into my yard with my camera for better angles and views for pictures of the pups. I saw plenty of people trying to traverse our single lane road to go snow shoeing in the Nature Preserve by my property. They would park and block our road so that they could do this activity. Sometimes it caused me to get angry and to imagine pushing their cars off the embankment when I could not get down my road due to their stupidity. So, I imagine that snowshoeing must be fun as so many idiots were out in force on my road doing so. My only question was, isn't there enough snow at your own house to snowshoe? Why come here and block up my road trying to get to the Preserve? Use your heads people......if I can't get a Suburban PAST you on my road, then a firetruck can't get PAST you to get TO my house in the event of an emergency....so I want snowshoes, but I promise to just use them on my own property to follow the pups around :)

Snap my fingers, immediate access to a BobCat and someone that actually knows how to operate one. We had this baby at the house all day one Saturday moving snow piles. It came in QUITE handy this winter. Of course they are REALLY expensive to buy, so I just need access to one, right when I need it, with a qualified operator, so that NO snowbank on my property will pose a hazard to driving or limit ability to snowplow future storms. I REALLY want a Bulldozer and I want to learn how to operate it as I think that would have felt GREAT to be able to bulldoze through huge snowbanks at will this winter. (and I would want it to have headlights so I could go out in the middle of the night and attack if the urge were to hit me.) Come to think of it, it would have a twofold purpose as it would have come in QUITE handy to rid my road of the illegally parked cars blocking access to our homes by the people that obviously are unable to control their urge to take a snowshoe hike.

This one is REALLY stretching the wish to the maximum, but hell, if we are dreaming I might as well shoot for PARADISE!

I would like to have my 2.5 acres domed, with sections of retractable roof portions of course. The way I figure it is this....I have 3 Siberian Huskies to whom this winter is PARADISE and I have the humans that live here that love the snow, BUT have limits to the love. With a dome, I could have it retract over the back yard and snow and snow and snow as much as it wants back there and the Sibes will still have their paradise! We can bundle up and head out there and play Eskimo with them WHENEVER we CHOOSE to do so. Perfect.

The front yard will NOT have a retractable portion and will be artificially heated so as to create perpetual Springtime out front!

Lawn chairs, a picnic table, maybe even a heated pool with a deck and a wet bar. That way when we are cold and miserable after the Eskimo games with the Sibes, we can come into the house, change into shorts or a bathing suit, grab a towel and head out front to warm up by the pool! So if I win a BIG Lotto jackpot this year, THIS wish will go to the top of the list, since it negates the need for almost all of the above mentioned items :) Except the dogsled....I still want one of those to play out back in the snow with the Sibes pulling us all over the yard! And maybe I should still wish for a bulldozer to help "clear the road" of cars owned by dedicated snowshoe hikers :)




To be continued.........