Now that the driveway’s clear, I’ve moved on to tackling our ice dams. Obviously, the roof rake was a first step toward keeping our ceilings from caving in, but these 12-below morning aren’t helping our cause.

So, I turned to the internet.

Dear Google, I like our drywall. Help me save it. Love, Ben.

Aside from “Tips for packing up and moving to a warmer climate,” I didn’t get much help until I made it to the “This Old House” website.

Their experts told me to go buy some panty hose.

And, since my brain was frozen from being outside, I didn’t think twice about it until I got to Walgreens and found out they were out of the driveway-ice-melt-salt
stuff that Bob Vila told me to put INSIDE the panty hose to melt the ice dams.

So, I’m standing at the counter with two packs of jet black No Nonsense Ultimate Shapers, getting strange looks from the cashier and the women behind me.

“So, is that it?” the cashier asks, curling her lip.

“Yeah, since you guys are all out of tools, aftershave and Jack Daniels,” I should have said loudly.

I felt much more comfortable in the Lowe’s checkout line buying the ice melt. Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to tell the neighbors that saw me outside trying to figure out which side of the panty hose was the open end.

Phone call this afternoon from an unknown number:

“Hi, Ben, this is Doug from Petersen Michaelsen Hardware. We have an order of specialty tools to be delivered to your house at your convenience. If you can give us a call, we can arrange the delivery.”

Hmm … I didn’t ORDER any tools. What the heck kind of SPECIALTY tools, could we need anyway? Dad just bought the roof rake this afternoon. Surely they’re not delivering THAT, are they?

So, I called back:

“Hi, this is Ben and you just called a little bit ago about a tool delivery. I’m heading home from work now, so you can drop them off anytime. But I have to ask … What are you delivering?”

Guy on the other end of the line just laughs.

“Your father-in-law thinks you need to have the right tools to do the right job.”

“Ah, so it was Pat. But again, what exactly are the “specialty tools” that you’re delivering?”

“We’ll, we’ve got a shovel, a gas can and a brand new snow blower.”

SWEET.

So, just as Dad and I were scraping snow off the roof to get rid of our growing ice dam problem, a dude drives up in a pickup and drops off our new toy. We now have a mostly clean driveway and no broken backs.

Sure beats shoveling.

Video to come …

Some pictures from digging out. It’s not often you have to shovel INSIDE of the house, but high wind + heavy snow + crack under the storm door meant I woke up on Wednesday with some cold shoes.

And here’s one from today. Part of me wanted to leave the tree up there for a couple days, just for the fun of it.

One of the memories of my youth is helping Dad with the Christmas lights and the stories he would tell about getting them to work.

“You can test them 1000 times, but some of them always go out when you put them up. Usually the ones that are hardest to reach.”

That was like his motto. The first week of December was typically filled with cold fingers, moving ladders and grumbling.

I got lucky last year. My fingers were cold, sure, but all of the lights were brand new, so the hardest part of decorating outside was figuring out how to plug in everything with no outlet on the front of the house. (Solution: Two 60-foot extension cords.)

This year, not so lucky.

First problem: no bushes. The lack of shrubbery on the front side of our house means I have to get creative with about 10,000 small white lights. So, my brilliant plan was to string them along the roof line.

Target sells boxes of small plastic clips for this exact purpose. Those clips were something I always laughed at because I thought they were the cheap, easy way out. The right way to do it, I learned from watching Dad, was to build custom wooden frames to fit around each of the windows and doors. That way, you just leave the lights attached to the frames, each meticulously labelled with their location — “North dining room window” — and screw the frame into the house each year. Simple, right?

Yeah, simple if you’re a handyman genius.

I’m a rookie, so I bought the clips. And attached them to the gutters and shingles. Much easier than I expected and actually a bit clever in their design, but I’m still not convinced they’ll withstand heavy wind or snow. (Dad’s wouldn’t budge in a tornado.)

I plugged two strings of lights together to make sure everything was working, then scaled the ladder that we had precariously propped against the house using three boards and a retaining wall stone for balancing out the uneven ground.

It was slow going, but after about an hour of clipping, ladder shifting and clipping again, the lights finally spanned the front of the house.

“Hey look. We’re not actually going to need that second string, Steph. Can you unplug it since I’m way up here on the ladder? We’ll just use the extension cord and run it down the side of the house.”

Unplug. Replug. Fail.

The last 32 lights (all in a row) on the string of 150 decided they were done. The same lights that had been burning bright less than four seconds earlier. Now, nothing.

Maybe one’s burned out. Nope.

Maybe the cord is just twisted. Nope.

I called Dad and explained the problem. He was silent for a second, then sighed.

All of the sudden, I knew it was Christmas season again.