It’s a great morning in Arvada, Colorado. It snowed four inches last night and I have a new snow blower.
(Technically, it’s a “snow thrower.” A snow thrower has only one stage that uses the augur to “throw” the snow out the shoot. A “snow blower” has two stages: the augur and a fan in the shoot that blows the snow out and further. I know this because I googled it.)
I love my snow blower. Snow blowers are to men what Tonka Toys are to boys. Finally, my dreams of getting outside and using a powerful machine to effortlessly move massive amounts of something somewhere else are coming true.
That is, if I can beat my neighbor to the punch. For example, before we moved last year, we had an obnoxiously nice neighbor who had a snowblower too. Sometimes, after a snow storm, he’d get out before I could and clear off our entire block-long sidewalk.
“Rats! Honey, Skip is clearing our sidewalk!” I would shout with irritated alarm as I peeked through the blinds.
Then I would hurriedly jump into my ski pants, dawn my coat, and slip on my ski goggles and rabbit fur hat with floppy ears.
“At least he didn’t do my driveway,” I’d think as I started up my snowblower.
Sometimes, after I’d finish my driveway, I’d see him at the end of the block finishing the sidewalk and I’d sneak over and do his driveway just to spite him.
“Take that, Obnoxiously Nice Neighbor!”
This winter our recent move has given us new neighbors. But, alas, our neighbor to the west of us has a snowblower too. Fortunately, during our last snow storm he only cleared the snow off the sidewalk to the west of him. I had the entire sidewalk to the east all to myself.
There’s also a widow and a neighbor with asthma on our block who will need their driveways cleared. That means I have three driveways and sidewalk galore to clear every time it snows.
Looks like I’ve moved to snow blower heaven.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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