Maple & Main

I have just come in from shoveling the snow for the third time today. And from the looks of things, in about an hour I will be back out again.

Ah, the joys of living in Wisconsin.

Whenever I bring this up, people say, “What did you expect, you live in Wisconsin. It snows here.”

Well no kidding it snows here. And in the past two years, it has snowed a lot.

Quite frankly, I really don’t like it. It’s inconvenient. It cuts into my sitting around and drinking coffee time.

I guess it just makes me miss the sun drenched afternoons of California, where the month of December would bring nothing more than a cool breeze and some high surf.

I can clearly remember sitting on the California freeway on a Friday afternoon, locked in traffic, only 10 miles from my house, and enjoying the beauty of the setting sun over the ocean.

Soon after, the first stars of the evening would come out, of which I could only see three due to the heavy smog cover. Two of those stars would usually turn out to be airplanes on their way to Los Angeles International Airport.

When I finally reached home an hour later (yes- one hour to travel 10 miles), I would kick back and relax out on the patio where I would watch the ash from a nearby wildfire fall gently from the sky, not unlike a winter snowfall.

Before long, the Santa Ana winds would kick up and blow the heavy smoke into our neighborhood. You can only handle the burning sting in your eyes so long before you were forced to retire indoors.

And as the night fell, the winds would increase to a roar, blowing tiles loose from the roof and eventually knocking down every fence in the neighborhood.

I would wake early the next morning to survey the damage and find the neighbor’s dog, now fence-free, in my yard, leaving me a special gift.

With no time to deal with the issue at hand, I would scurry off to work (at least traffic was light at 5AM on a Saturday).

And who knows, maybe today was going be the day the big one hit. Unlike a tornado, you can’t forecast if the conditions are right for an earthquake and head for the basement. Heck, we didn’t even have basements.

Ah, the joys of living in California.

I’m going back out to shovel the snow now. And I am going to enjoy every frost bitten minute of it.