This is my main snow dump, looking from the street side parking spot back to the house. Hard to tell here, but it’s quite a steep hill, with impressive mounds of thrown snow.

In case you’ve been wondering why I’ve been so quiet lately, I have been shoveling snow off the driveway, car, and street almost every day starting Sunday, February 15^th. We haven’t had snow every day, but snowplow berms have been tormenting me even on some non-snow days. You do NOT want to know what is going through my head while I’m tackling those frozen-to-cement berms, trust me.

A recent snowplow berm. They block the driveway quite thoroughly. The longer they sit, the harder they get. They have to be excavated, lugged, and thrown into the back yard snow dump because they melt slowly and keep the road icy or, worse, flooded.

I have been trying to practice “no-mind” while I’m shoveling. That is the perfect meditation for shoveling because, although I must pay attention to what I’m doing, it is not intellectually demanding. Whenever I catch my mind nattering in the background, I remind it to be quiet. I’m getting better at it. The quiet lasts for (wait for it) a few seconds before my mind takes off on some other inane topic. I’m getting better at ignoring the chatter, but I would like to turn it off. Like a television on for background noise, it’s just annoying.

(I can’t think constructively while shoveling because the shovel frequently catches on the cracks in the pavement, rocks, frozen tire tracks, whatever, jarring me physically and interrupting thought.)

After another attempt at no-mind, I was blessed with a revelation on the first evening of this heavy snowstorm. I had been shoveling for hours and was getting tired, but the snow was falling faster than I could shovel, and I couldn’t stop, afraid of what mess would greet me in the morning.

I caught my mind blathering about my frustrations with my at-risk students. (Huh, where did that come from—I retired two years ago?) My rant was about so many kids just want to be “cool.” They have no interest in anything school has to offer them, for their own good, blah, blah, blah. (Don’t get me started!)

Well, in my wandering, out of control mind, my students morphed into Kathy and Kevin’s former foster children. Those kids do love and appreciate Kathy and Kevin, but they just want to be home with their mom. Go figure, :). Like my students, they see nothing they want in the life WE think is important—like learning new things, being outside in nature, going places and doing things. I mean, MY way is the right way! Why can’t they see that?

And then, as I am indulging my admittedly-manic passion for shoveling the driveway and street around it, my mind ranted about the teenage boy’s satisfaction in doing manual labor. Oh, he has no ambition and so much (wasted) potential!

Oh. Oh my.

Ginny, listen to yourself! What are YOU doing to excess lately? Mmm, hmm—manual labor, and you love it, too. It gives a very satisfying sense of control, results in concrete accomplishment, and provides legitimate excuses for avoiding more unpleasant responsibilities.

Misplaced, misapplied judgmentalism again. Mea culpa, again.