Of Christmas decorations and Honda snowblowers
The Christmas decorations are down now, and all safely stowed until next year. The Spouse helped this year with the takedown, which was at the same time nice and frustrating. I was trying to take the village down, which requires carefully replacing each piece into its respective box exactly as it came when new, because I'm really anal about stuff like that. I'd be in the midst of putting a building away, when The Spouse would ask, "where is this ornament?" while holding up a box with a picture of the ornament on it. Gee, hon, can you just look for it? Obviously, he wanted me to locate the ornament so he could put it into its box. So, I abandoned the village deconstruction to focus on the tree. I have always done this myself, and I do have a system for putting the ornaments away, so it made sense that I take charge. He removed the ornaments from the tree, laying them nicely on the sofa table, while I fetched the boxes for the ones that have specific boxes (Hallmark ornaments, for example), and wrapped the others in tissue and put them in zip-lock plastic bags. He then put them all in the ornament storage boxes. Youngest Son helped him put the storage boxes up in the attic while I finished taking down the village. Then came the tree itself. It came in a box - a box that looked much too small to have ever held the tree. We managed to get the bottom and middle sections smooshed down enough to fit into the box, but no way the top section would fit. It went into heavy duty plastic bags, doubled up to make them stronger. The tree in the box and bagged top were then stowed in the garage until next year - right next to our old tree, which really has to go. We're pretty sure Oldest Son wants it, so we'll probably take it over to his house next weekend.
So, the house is back to normal now. I rearranged stuff a little, moving a bunch of the family photos to the top of the TV where the village sat. I really wanted to keep the sofa table behind the sofa (logical, right?), but The Spouse wanted it back under the mirror where the tree was, and where it's been for years. Okay, for now. But once I find something better to go under that mirror, the sofa table will live behind the sofa.
It snowed all night Saturday, and some Sunday morning, but then it started raining. Youngest Son left for school at about one. The accumulated snow/slush in the street was almost beyond passable. The Spouse and the same-first-name-as-the-spouse neighbor got their Honda snowblowers out and began the removal process. Then the UPS driver neighbor came over with his Kabota tractor and plowed the huge berm the snowplow driver had left in front of our house and the house across the street. He used the bucket in the front of his tractor to scoop up the snow and pile it in the yard, off the street. He mostly just wanted to play with his tractor, but we didn't mind. If the county isn't going to do the job right, between The Spouse and the neighbors, we can do a much better job of clearing the street, and not leave berms in front of our driveways. The same-first-name-as-The-Spouse neighbor was gone snowmobiling over the holidays, so was shocked to come home and see the horrible job the county had done. As I said, we've never had this problem in 22 years of living here, so to see the street pretty much not plowed after days of snowstorms, was pretty surprising. He and The Spouse spent a good half hour discussing the issue while their matching snowblowers idled. It was kind of cute.
Speaking of snowblowers, I have to put in a plug for Honda. When we first built here, we had a small Sears Craftsman snowblower. It worked okay, but didn't throw the snow as far as The Spouse would have liked. The neighbor moved in a year after we built our house. He had a funny old Ariens machine that had switchable parts. It could be a lawnmower in the summer and a snowblower in the winter. It did an okay job, but seemed to break down a lot. The neighbor bought a Honda. Apparently, he got some sort of amazing deal. For the next few years, The Spouse would watch in envy as the neighbor would snow blow his driveway, throwing snow so far it almost landed in our yard. It was a sight to see. The Spouse wanted a Honda so bad, but they are expensive. Finally, the time came to replace the little Craftsman. You'd think it was a no-brainer, right? Not so much. We looked at the Honda's, but the idea of spending $1800 for a snowblower was still a tough nut to crack. We bought a big, huge, fancy Craftsman with tons of horsepower, for about $600 less than the smaller Honda. Big mistake.
Though it was bigger in width and horsepower, it didn't throw the snow as high or as far as the neighbor's Honda. And it kept breaking shear pins. Then it started losing washers, nuts, bolts, all over the garage floor. The repair guy was a constant visitor, but he only came up once a week from Coeur d'Alene, which was a very bad thing. We needed a snowblower that worked, not one that was broken more often than not. Fortunately, the neighbor took pity on us, and did our driveway when our snowblower was broken. We told Sears we were not happy. The owner of the local Sears (it's one of those small town ones that only carries hardware, patio stuff, and tools, no clothing and other stuff, and he OWNS it) told us to just bring it back at the end of the season for a full refund. We did, and bought the Honda. The Honda is amazing. It throws the snow clear across the driveway and into the yard - a distance of about 25 or 30 feet. And it's so easy to use, I can run it. It's kind of humorous to see The Spouse and the same-first-name-as-the-spouse neighbor with their matching snowblowers clearing the cul-de-sac. The two other poor neighbors both struggle with inferior snowblowers that barely throw the snow into their yards, and I can't help but wonder if they also watch with envy, as The Spouse once did, while the two Hondas send streams of snow high into the air and across the entire width of the street.
