However, when they clear their own driveway with a giant snow blower, a driveway which is about 20 feet from mine, and leave the snow blower about 10 feet from my driveway and let me fend for myself, well, then I'm not really feeling the love so much. I'm feeling like I want the keys to that bad boy so I can clear out my parking spots.
They do clear my walkway and a path between my cars and the neighbors' cars. That is helpful since the snow has a horridly thick ice coating on its surface. I had left the cars toward the street end of the driveway, which fits 3.5 cars in it (3 normal cars and a Smart Car), so a swath has been cleared in front along the sidewalk side -- also helpful. The rest of it, though, is all mine. Mine, mine, mine to shovel, shovel, shovel, especially the area closest to the house that I desperately hope would get machine-cleared so I could just drive into it.
This spot I left open for them to do is only about 8x10. It would've taken less than 5 minutes to clear with the snow blower. It's not my equipment to use, I understand this, but it would be so neighborly and so landlord-ly to do, right? Or how about these excuses: I'm old, I'm recovering from some bizarre case of vertigo that knocked me for a loop yesterday, and I'm too short to chuck the snow onto high piles. Nothing? No love for me? Okay, I'm bringing out the big one: For crying out loud, I'm a delicate flower!
I complain all the time when people, including me, complain about the snow. It's storms like these, though, where there's ice and sleet in the beginning then that freezes then lots of powdery snow (the best except when you're tossing it onto a pile and the wind kicks in) topped by about an inch of icy crust, that remind me maybe living here isn't so wonderful. Plus it's sleeting again and my face is starting to frost up. The precipitation today is an absolute bitch to deal with because I have to keep stopping and carving patterns into the snow in order to chop the top layer into manageable bits. That entire space I mentioned earlier, the 8x10 area? It would be really cool to get someone at each corner and lift the giant ice coating off in one layer like a table top; really cool, indeed.
But you know what would be even cooler? If the landlords used their large, gas-powered snow blower to clear that damn space out. Yup, that would be way cooler. After all, there are some things this delicate flower probably shouldn't be doing, and I'm willing to bet that shoveling is one of them.
