NEIGHBORLY ACTS

Cold with hat-hair, but smiling.

Shoveling is no fun. It's certainly no fun the morning after a heavy blizzard like we saw Sunday night.

So I was less than excited to grab the shovel, lace up the boots and trudge out into the cold early Monday morning. It had been a looong weekend, with the Little One battling an ear infection and a serious lack of sleep. From Christmas Day through to Monday, the amount of sleep the Wife and I had could be measured in minutes rather than hours.

Sleep deprived with a serious cold taking root everywhere in my body, I begrudgingly went outside to clear out the white stuff.

It wound up being a great experience.

Don't get me wrong. The shoveling part - complete with the trickle of snot continuously freezing in a pool below my nostrils - sucked.

The part I enjoyed was the neighborly interaction. It started with the next-door-neighbor coming over to help shovel out part of the driveway. We discussed our mutual hatred for snow, and how last year at this time, we both were making mental plans to purchase a snowblower.

As we discussed how nice a snowblower would be, another neighbor from a few houses down rolled up with his snowblower and cleared the remainder of the lower portion of our driveway. Then he cleared the area in front of our mailbox and apologized that he couldn't get up the stairs to do the walkway.

Apologize? Are you kidding? I wanted to kiss him for doing what he did. In about five minutes, he cleared an area that would have meant an extra two hours or so for me and my shovel. I was more than thankful.

From there, he then cleared the driveway of the guys across the street (in all, he cleared at least eight driveways that I saw).  While he did, one of the guys yelled a hearty hello to me, adding that he really liked the "beautiful Christmas card" of the Little One.

The compliment - and the generous neighborly acts - made it seem much less cold out there.