Okay, We Give In

Last year's snow. What can I say? There was a lot of it. A lot. Yet my husband and I, in good proto-SFNE fashion, shoveled our driveway ourselves, as we have every winter since we moved here. (Granted, we used those curvy ergonomic shovels--I wouldn't use anything else.) It was a lot of work. A lot. But it was exercise, and we felt rightfully proud of our achievement. Until the next snowfall.

This year is already different. Jim hurt his back in June, but despite physical therapy, massage, miles and miles of walking, hours of exercises (he's amazingly dedicated--much better than I would be), his back isn't where it was at summer's start. The last thing I wanted was (a) for him to hurt his back again shoveling or (b) for me to hurt my back doing all the shoveling by myself. Yesterday's snow wasn't much--a few inches really. Easy for the ergonomic shovels. In fact, we didn't even need to shovel in the morning; we just drove right out of our space in the Subaru, sans shoveling...

right to our local Ace Hardware store, where they were holding an electric Toro Snowthrower for us. (And yes, in good New England frugal fashion, we paid less than MSRP.) We bought it (it's small and light enough to throw into the rear compartment of an Outback wagon) and brought it home. Jim tried it out and declared it a success.

So we won't be pulling out the snow shovels much this winter, except for the side porch and the steps, I guess. But I'd rather my husband have a healthy back than let a misplaced sense of pride force him into more pain. At which point we'd probably have gone out and bought the thing anyway. But dealing with the snow in your own way is still SFNE, isn't it?