Yankee Workout

This morning I went to Yoga class where I got to think good thoughts while trying to stretch my body to be longer and taller.  One thing I was giving thanks for in that class was that I do not live in the blizzard hit area of the country any more.  For those of you who are stuck inside with two feet of snow outside I am sorry.  Even if you only have one foot of snow I am sorry.

Living in North Carolina now and almost never having to shovel was a choice Russ and I made nineteen years ago.  Why my southern born parents ever left the south to live in Connecticut for thirty years I will never know.  We came here after living through fifteen snow storms in twelve weeks in 1993 and have never looked back.

One really memorable snowstorm took place in Wilton when I must have been about nine years old.  It happened before my parents built on to our house and we still had four garages all in a row.  It was a blizzard very similar to the one Connecticut had yesterday so huge amounts of snow fell and the winds were so strong that they blew it up against the house.  The drifts were way above the garage doors so that when we opened them there was a wall of snow at least eight feet deep outside.

I remember digging tunnels out of one garage door opening and looping back to another garage door opening.  It was like a giant hamster habit trail in snow.  Our garage was heated and I’m sure that my sister Margaret and I spent at least $300 in heating oil because we opened all the doors at the same time to dig tunnels.  My mother must have been glad that we were just not bothering her and never came down to see what we were doing.

Shoveling snow is the hardest exercise on earth.  It uses lots of different muscle groups that don’t get used enough unless you are a prisoner who breaks up rocks all day.  The trick to shoveling is to do it throughout the storm, unless it is blowing like it did yesterday.  The second trick is to shovel as soon as the snow stops because new snow is lighter than old snow.  The worst snow is one that ends with sleet or freezing rain on top so you get a really hard crust on top.  That stuff is hard to break through and really heavy.

For all my Yankee domiciled friends right now, I hope you have power, are warm and have shoveled already.  If you have done all those things try some Yoga.  The stretching will do you good.  If you don’t have power, or heat or own a shovel do some Yoga.  You will need to find some inner peace.  Namaste.