{"id":2081,"date":"2011-01-26T11:20:23","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T16:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2011-01-26T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T16:47:08","slug":"shoveling-a-puddle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2011\/01\/shoveling-a-puddle\/","title":{"rendered":"Shoveling a puddle"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2082\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2082\" style=\"width: 315px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2082\" title=\"weather_20110126\" src=\"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/weather_20110126.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"315\" height=\"279\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/weather_20110126.png 315w, https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/weather_20110126-300x266.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 315px) 100vw, 315px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2082\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Courtesy Weatherunderground.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>DC is in the middle of its third winter weather &#8220;event&#8221; in as many weeks.  In some ways, we&#8217;ve been lucky so far; the major storms that have hit the East Coast have missed us.  In other ways, we really haven&#8217;t been lucky since what we&#8217;ve been getting has been just enough to need to be dealt with but not enough to either have fun in or to really justify closing anything.<\/p>\n<p>This morning I spent 45 minutes shovelmopping <acronym title=\"My house and my mother's house.\">the sidewalks I&#8217;m responsible for<\/acronym> in my neighborhood.  It was like shoveling a puddle with a thin skin of ice on top.  To make matters even less satisfactory, it started to sleet while I was bent over the shovel trying to scrape half frozen water off uneven concrete.  But then I noticed something.<\/p>\n<p>My mother&#8217;s across the street neighbors have two old pine trees in their side yard.  These aren&#8217;t squat, fat, Christmas tree looking evergreens; they&#8217;re the straight, tall, thin-needle variety.  Once I stopped scraping the plastic blade of my snow shovel across the concrete to try to get under the slush I could hear the sleet hissing through the pine trees&#8217; needles.<\/p>\n<p>Even though I could still hear the din of traffic on the two nearby cross-town routes, that hiss sounded like peace for a minute, like nature subtly making itself known.  In a world that largely doesn&#8217;t seem to pay attention unless nature does the equivalent of set her hair on fire and run through the family bar-b-que naked, this was a nice reminder to be mindful and to pause.<\/p>\n<p>So while I&#8217;d rather have <acronym title=\"Which we're supposed to get some of starting this afternoon.\">actual snow to shovel<\/acronym>, having to shovel a puddle turned out to not be all bad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DC is in the middle of its third winter weather &#8220;event&#8221; in as many weeks. In some ways, we&#8217;ve been lucky so far; the major storms that have hit the East Coast have missed us. In other ways, we really haven&#8217;t been lucky since what we&#8217;ve been getting has been just enough to need to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-thoughts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2081"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2088,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2081\/revisions\/2088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}