Words can’t even begin to explain my frustration with a small hump of snow that has been torturing me for weeks.
Well, ok I suppose technically words can explain…but you get my drift.
Anyway, back to the snow hump of torture.
First let me say…I have wonderful neighbors. Fantastic and friendly neighbors even. So this little rant in no way means I have any problem with them whatsoever. None! They are all great. It’s the snow that seems to be on a mission to aggravate my life and destroy my poor van.
Don’t ask me what the heck it has against my van, but the two must have had words at some point to have started such a stupid feud.
Did I mention the snow isn’t even in MY driveway???
We’ll call my neighbors, ‘A’ and ‘B’.
‘A’ lives next door; ‘B’ a couple houses down.
So ‘B’ got permission from ‘A’ to park one of his vehicles in the empty spot in his driveway.
By the way, we live in townhouses, so the parking spaces fit 2 vehicles each…kinda!
Anyway…my mother comes for a sleepover to visit the kiddies and I once a week, so we very carefully manage to fit our vehicles side by side in my driveway.
Since ‘B’s’ car was parked in ‘A’s’ extra space…when I say ‘very carefully’, I do mean VERY!!!
‘B’s’ car had been snowed in since…well…since whenever this damn ‘winter’ thing started last year, but a few weeks ago he sold his car, so he went about digging it out.
The funny thing is…he dug the car out of the snow, but left a good 5 foot length of snow, piled trunk high, behind the empty spot his car used to live in.
How, you wonder?
Well simple really.
When there were no vehicles in either driveway he dug the car out, just barely enough, and then through some pretty heroic maneuvers, managed to drive the car out…SIDEWAYS!
I’m still stumped.
Hence the huge hump of snow for 5 feet behind the now empty parking spot.
So anyway, with the disappearance of the vehicle came some much needed room which I greatly appreciated…for a while.
I would park my van in the center of my driveway, sighing happily at what I perceived as MILES of space.
I could literally dance a jig right around my van if I wanted to.
In fact…if I’m going to be completely honest…I could probably have invited about fifteen friends over and had a small dance party in my driveway.
Very small.
And somewhat circular, if my van was still parked in the driveway at the time of said dance.
But anyway, I digress.
Back to the subject at hand and my reason for hating the hump.
The first hint that the hump of snow wasn’t happy with being left behind, and that it apparently blamed my van for its unhappiness, was when neighbor ‘A’ had a friend over one night.
I drove into my parking spot and noticed a white car parked at an odd angle in the recently vacated space.
Its butt end was a bit on my side of the driveway, so I parked a little over to make sure the visitor would be able to get himself out when it came time to leave.
Keep in mind, no one had shoveled Mr. Hump yet.
My 16 year old came home some time later and mentioned the car.
She also suggested I go take a picture of it and the license plate just in case it hit the van upon departure.
The next day, my daughter came home from school and said my taillight was broken.
She asked if I had taken a picture of the white car.
Naturally, I grumbled and said she should have mentioned it the night before…when it wasn’t too late.
She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms.
I believe I taught her an important lesson that day. I shall title the lesson ‘Sometimes good advice comes from unexpected sources…and you should listen’.
So off I went to chat with my awesome neighbor, explaining what had happened.
He, in turn, talked to the owner of the white car and got me the money to fix the taillight.
I’ll never know if it was the owner of the car who produced the money, or if my neighbor took it upon himself to rectify the situation.
I was very grateful either way, and told him so.
So after that little tussle, the hump and my van tolerated each other for a while.
I suppose something must have set it off the other day though, because yesterday when I was backing my van out after my mom’s visit, van met hump and they had an epic battle.
The hump had actually lost a bit of size over the last couple weeks, and was only about two feet long by now, but boy did it put up a monstrous fight.
My van lost and is wallowing in shame as we speak. 
I tried valiantly to dig my poor baby out, but I have an injured shoulder so can’t really shovel with two hands.
It’s more of a one handed shovel (with my left hand), while the right hand steady’s the shovel so it doesn’t slap me in the face.
I have to admit though, as careful as I was, the effort still left me needing some serious painkillers after which left me in a somewhat happy state despite the situation.
Eventually, after about 25 minutes of the ‘shoveling stubborn snow’ and ‘rocking the van back and forth’ crap, I got out and simply stood in my driveway, arms crossed, glaring at Mr. Hump until I saw two unsuspecting neighborhood teens walk out of their homes.
Running across the street, I gave them my best ‘helpless lady in distress’ look and they immediately came over to help, with grins on their faces.
I suppose the grins may possibly have been because my adorably cute 16 year old daughter had gotten home and was at that point standing in the driveway watching the show in amusement.
She looks forward to being home because almost every single day I seem to be in one amusing situation or another.
Anyway, the guys put on their best ‘Look at me I’m sexy’ faces for her, propped themselves in front of the van in a very manly pushing stance, and directed me to reverse when they counted to three.
Seven tries and a rubber carpet later, we managed to free my poor embarrassed van from the grips of the evil hump.
The boys waved goodbye and walked away with satisfied grins on their faces.
I was glad I could help give their day purpose.
As for my baby…while I was out driving later, I noticed it was acting a little weird.
I’m hoping it will get over it, but time will tell.
If it passes away dramatically any time soon, you better believe I will make that hump wish it was summer!!!
For now…just in case…I have quietly amassed a collection of ice-melt and VERY sharp shovels. MUAHAHAHA!