It Was Hard

Me and my son talked for a while, and it was hard.
We left out home, to go to grandma, to check up on her, to see if her yard was plowed.

This was the first year that I did not plow my own house, by myself. Both Kids were/are old enough to get out there and help, and they did. So, my main walk ways were cleared from snow, and quickly. And, I felt the years knowing in the past I did it all by myself and quickly. I was proud of both my son and daughter, Adriana and Elijah.

So, we finish our stuff, and take a run to check on grandma. We had no power in our home, but, because I knew the power was going to be out, I prepared. I set the thermostat to 80 in the house, and got out the back up heating and cooking stuff. Always set your refrigerator to max cool too. It freezes the food, but frozen food keeps for hours and thaws quickly when the power is out.

While our neighbors had to flee their home and/or endure 40 and 55 degree temperatures in the house, We stayed at 65 for a while, and just before the power came back on it was 60 degrees, being out from 12AM to 6PM.
So we go up to grandma, and, nothing was plowed.

Grandpa decided to put cat litter on the top of 1 inch of compacted Ice and snow. It would have been easily removed when it was still wet, but, now it was time to chop that ice.

I took the wheelchair out of the van, and my shovel, and we used grandpa’s plastic shovel, and we, me and my son, began to clear the way; he ended up chopping with the ice chopper. We cleared her entrance and made a spot so that a car can pull in and unload a person and not need to walk on ice. We got down to the cement driveway, and, I had a half a bag of salt with me to finish the job. We made a path, even to grandpa’s car, and salted the whole thing.

Meanwhile, we were pissed. Grandpa was inside watching television. But I told my son not to worry, but Elijah was livid [that all he does is watch TV, he said]. Meanwhile, I guess grandma and grandpa argued, because he rushed out to try to clean some, but told us to stop because he had placed cat litter on the ice. Insanity, yes, early signed of being senile. We kept on going regardless of the accusations like, that is my shovel, grandpa said, the very shovel I bought in 2001. I had to visually cue my son just not to say anything and keep on working; we did and grandpa left. Grandpa has been in another world lately, so we had left early, at 3:30 instead of 6:00 PM, just to keep the peace.

The moral of the story is this, my mom had 7 kids total. We drive over 45 minutes in snow to get to grandma. There are a whole bunch of grand-kids. And, one son lives ten minutes away, while the other lives 15 minutes away. So, why is it the cripple son, with two kids, has to drive to Cary to shovel snow, when both of the other sons are not cripple, and healthy and without kids in the home. You all go figure that crapper out. And we still make food runs to grandma, when she says she is hungry and has no food.

I am not sure what is wrong with this picture, but can y’all help me understand what the heck I am doing wrong. The last thing I told my son is grandpa is old and should not have to shovel snow when both have younger more able bodied children, and grandchildren, that can do so. God Bless.