<friday march 21, 2003 - 8:30 a.m.>

I have experienced an event that has seared my eyeballs. I am traumatized for life.

What caused this horror... this mental scarring?

It can only be one thing: Disney on Ice.

I barely survived with my brain intact.

There is a blog brewing, but it has to come later. I have much to tell about this nightmare on skates - a half-dressed adult (and very possibly gay) Mowgli, the overpriced food and doodads, the feeling that I was witnessing a basement-budget musical renditon of Planet of the Apes...

Stay tuned for the report.

p.s. I just thought of something. The show would have been passable, maybe even humourous, if I was really drunk.

<wednesday march 19, 2003 - 9:50 p.m.>

Mark has requested an opportunity to guest blog. He has some issues he wants to discuss. The main one is concerning The Ice Chipping Incident.

<Mark starts here>

I bought it two years ago. In the fall I believe. I saw it while out shopping at Canadian Tire for snow shovels. I own 5 snow shovels by the way. Two small hand shovels for doing the stairs, one larger shovel with a bent handle for throwing snow up on 7 foot high piles of snow without throwing my back out, one wide shovel for pushing snow and one huge scoop for pushing snow off the driveway 20 feet into the middle of the lawn to avoid ever having 7 foot high piles of snow.

...and I own an ice chipper.

I loved this ice chipper the second I saw it. It's heavy. The kind of heavy that makes your arms shake from tired muscles for about 4 hours after using it. It has a good sharp edge on it and is steel with royal blue paint trim on the blade. I've always loved chipping the ice off the driveway. I think it's more Canadian than hockey. There's something tremendously satisfying about removing that 6 inch thick glacier from your driveway in the spring. The men that walk by will make a comment such as "looks good!" or "she's a bugger that ice" and I nod knowingly and make a comment such as "Yup, but she's coming off pretty good there" and they nod and watch for a while.

Women walk by and they usually say "you know it's going to melt eventually anyway." It's abundantly clear that some people just don't get it.

As I said, I've had the ice chipper for two years. Last year was a particularly mild winter with many thaws and I actually did not get to use the chipper at all. Not once as a matter of fact.

This year was different. One of the coldest winters in over ten years. I made a point of not really scraping the driveway down when shovelling it just so I could get some good ice buildup. I thought about the spring all winter. I thought about how all the hard work shoveling the driveway would be worth it in the spring when I got to chip the ice off.

More important though than chipping the ice is the pool of water that builds up on the driveway. We have a sewer drain on our driveway that is forever foiled from draining because of the ice. You see, you have to chip away at the ice to get the water to flow down the sewer drain.

This year as the spring thaw finally came, we had a good pool of water building up on the driveway. A very good pool of water. I looked out the window at it for a few days wondering how much I would let it build up before opening the dam of water.

It was a Saturday and the forecast was for two days of warm sunny weather. I had decided that Sunday would be the day. Andrea was out for part of the day and I was with the girls. I wanted to go out and inspect the progress of the water buildup, but it would have been a hassle getting the girls all dressed just to go out and look at the driveway. Emma was saying something to me but I wasn't really listening. I was thinking about that ice that needed to be chipped away and how much water would flow down that sewer. Probably a lot of water.

Andrea came home and since I had been up at 5:30 with Sarah I informed Andrea I was going to go up for a nap. As I lay there thinking about tomorrow and the fun I would have with the ice. Andrea bundled up the girls and headed outside. I was thankful that she took them out so that I could have a nice quiet nap.

They came back in after about an hour and I woke and headed downstairs. I went to the window to see how much water had built up in the past hour of late day melting.

There was none. No water. All gone.

Andrea had chipped away the ice. My simple joy had been taken from me. Next she'll be cutting the lawn. If you do decide to cut the lawn Andrea, I have one small request.

Please let me put the gas in the mower. Please.

<Mark ends here>

My Own Defense (this is Andrea again)

I have read the above. I would like to make the following points.

1. Never did I suspect that my husband had such a yearning to remove the aforementioned ice, and that he had established such an intense relationship with one of our tools.

2. Yes, I took the girls outside that day. Yes, it is a lot of effort to get them dressed in 72 layers of clothing, but it beats sitting around our living room. AND I wanted to give Mark some quality nap time.

They played well by themselves, out there in our seven foot high snow piles. I wasn't just going to stand around and do nothing, so I did the obvious thing. I grabbed the shovel (Do we really own five? Omigod.) and started clearing some of the snow. When that wasn't cutting it I went for the shiny new chipper, thinking that I'd just get rid of a little of the polar ice cap that had formed on our driveway. It was there on the threshold of the garage, just waiting to be used.

As the girls played and time went by (it was lovely and sunny that day) a little chipping became a lot of chipping.

I will admit, perhaps I got a little carried away. I will admit, I chipped away some of the neighbor's driveway ice too. I will also admit, that there was a little bit of satisfaction watching the water drain away into the sewer. But I didn't do it all, there was still some ice there the next day, Mark could have done that.

My goodness, I didn't realize our laundry was going to get such an airing. Tell you what Mark, come summer, you can do all the mowing, and all of the weed popping, ok? :)

By the way, don't forget we still owe Gabrielle for the eggs.