I can't believe I shoveled...

...the whole thing.

Only those who have been to Toad Woods will truly understand the magnitude of tonight's Adventures in Shoveling. I shoveled the driveway for the first time since moving here 4 years ago. The entire driveway, not just the concrete apron in front of the garage that Plow Guy can't easily clear. The whole 275-foot curving up the hill length of the driveway! Wide enough for batwrangler to drive down, which she did a little over an hour ago.

( Yes, really )

You can take the girl homeowner out of Minnesota, but you can't take the Minnesota out of the girl.

The whole job took 3 hours, working at a relaxed but steady pace and including two short breaks. The timing worked out well. I finished, came indoors, made two cups of Vosges Aztec Cocoa (with 1% milk rather than the whole milk and cream mixture their recipe calls for), and was just two paragraphs into this post when a car pulled into the normal guest parking space on the near side of the garage. That answered that -- guess I shoveled wide enough! (Hey, it's dark out here. The driveway curves. Finding the edges under all that snow is tricky.)

11,706 steps. It's the first time I've tallied over 10,000 in a day without leaving Toad Woods, and over 8,000 of them involved the full body workout of shoveling. Yes, I feel it. Upper arm strength has never been something I could speak of in any terms other than "lacking."

I anticipate a long soak in a tub of Lush goodness in my near future. Not tonight; I'd fall asleep in it. But tomorrow, oh, yeah....