EFF WISCONSIN!!!

I shoveled snow for three straight hours today. THREE STRAIGHT HOURS! And I am not a wuss. I move, baby! I am a non-stop snow moving machine. No breaks longer than 20 seconds to take a drink of Vitamin Water. THREE STRAIGHT HOURS!!! We got hit with a blizzard that snowed for 30 hours yesterday and a whopping 16 inches fell here with drifts of 2-3 feet in my friggin' driveway. And the problem with my particular driveway is that there is nowhere to go with the shit! The houses are directly on either side and in the back where our shared driveway "Ts" there's a fence surrounding everything and my neighbor lady's garage. Yes, I am a good samaritan and shovel for her as she is elderly. SO! I literally have to heave the god-forsaken shit up and over either a 4 foot fence on one half or a 6 foot fence on the other. There are only two gaps approximately 2 feet wide on each end of the drive that I can throw the crap through but then that means pushing shovel load after shovel load 30 to 40 feet at a time to get to these gaps...a bit time consuming. So I heave. I figure I heaved at least 500 shovel fulls today, each weighing somewhere in the vicinity of 20 pounds plus...the snow was very wet and heavy thank you very much. Add it up, kids...that's about 10,000 pounds. And that's just the stuff I had to heave, that doesn't factor in the crap I was able to merely push--often having the shovel dig in causing the handle to painfully jam into my lower abdominal region...this happened approximately 37 times.

My back is killing me, my arms feel like lead, my hands are claws right now, my hamstrings are angry and my neck--if it had a voice--would be whimpering like a little girl who just had her entire My Little Pony collection melted by her mean older brother.

And I've shoveled at least 25 times this year and winter's still got a lot of time left. We usually start warming up in mid-May for God's sake...and that's not an exaggeration.

So, yeah, "Eff Wisconsin!" And don't let anybody tell you any different. It sucks here. No bones about it. Someone tells you they "Love living here!" they're full of shit or, as the saying goes, got a little bit of the "Ignorance is bliss" thing going on. There is very little good about living here. Shitty weather, short summer, and incredibly effed up taxes. It's really ridiculous anyone's left living here anymore when you think about it.

Yeah, I bitch about living here a lot. I know. I honestly hate the climate here. I want to move. But my family's here and my friends are here. That's it. I'd miss them.

But I gotta tell ya. I've had it. 40 years of living through miserable winters is enough. Time for a change. The depression of the "winter blues" has really hit me harder and harder the last 6-7 years and this year's record setting snowfalls just sealed the deal.

We're actively looking for someplace warmer to live. I can't put my daughter in the same position I find myself in now when she's 40 and feeling stuck like I do.

So if you've got a job opportunity for an ambitious, uber-talented writer/artist lemme know! I'm there in a heartbeat.

Seriously.

R