Infinite Discovery, Finite Time

-LIFT WITH YOUR LEGS, NOT YOUR BACK. This means squatting a little bit, getting your shovel under the snow, and then standing back up out of the squat. Do not bend over at the waist or back. It’s leg day, not arm day. SNOW IS WATER, AND IT IS HEAVIER THAN YOU THINK.

-if you have a car that you park outside, pull your windshield wipers so they’re up off the car. this will keep them from getting trapped by snow, or iced down

-if you park outside, you’re going to regularly want to clear off and then shovel out as much snow from on top of your car as you can. You can use a broom to push stuff off the roof if you’re not super tall

-if you park in a garage for which you are responsible, shovel along the edge of the door so it doesn’t get stuck down

-it’s much easier to do multiple small rounds of shoveling while it’s snowing than it will be to deal with all of it once the storm is over. Regularly clearing snow also makes it easier for you to leave a building if you need to

-try to shovel every 2-4 hours, based on how accumulation looks. A good metric, rather than using time, is to keep an eye on something outside (picnic table, bench, wall) so you can see how deep it’s accumulating. As soon as you catch yourself thinking “oh no that’s a lot, I don’t want to shovel it” then you HAVE to go do it right then

-remove the snow as deep as you can. If you can, get down to the stairs/porch/sidewalk surface. This will prevent packed snow from turning into ice, and give you a surface you’re familiar with walking on

-just pitch that shit on a yard/lawn

-wear workout clothes if you have them: sweats/joggers, sweatshirt, with gloves + hat. You’re going to get warm! Take them off when you come inside so they have a chance to dry off if possible

-when you are shoveling stairs, walk all the way to the bottom and then work your way back up

-trampled snow is much more difficult than fresh

-clear as wide a path as you can. Whole width of stairs/sidewalk/walkway. no matter what, you’re going to lose a couple inches of width, so make that impact as minor as possible. It’s really tempting to just clear a little path for walking, but that’s the devil who hates emergency services and the mail carrier talking and we don’t listen to him

-if there are bushes or trees you’re responsible for, try and give them a little shake when you’re outside to knock the snow off. It’ll prevent damage to the plants

-listen to a podcast or something while you work, it’ll be fun

-actually it’s really satisfying to clear all that snow away and know you’re making it easier on yourself and everyone else

YOU REALLY DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO STRUGGLE YOUR WAY OUT IN AN EMERGENCY.

And the assumptions underlying this, more or less, break down to:

Everybody is secretly bad deep down. They're born that way (no, this is not original sin, wdym, it's just an Honest and Realistic assessment of human nature!) and have to be taught to cover it up through childhood with facades of politeness. Everybody is lying all the time by pretending to be better or nicer than they really are, and this facade takes active effort to maintain. When the effort drops and the facade slips, the true underlying rottenness shows through.

All actions taken are rational and reasoned, at all times. Lying is always a deliberate, purposeful action meant to advance a person's aims and goals. There is never any reason to lie except to make yourself look good. Therefore, any good or nice statement or action may be a lie, but any bad or harmful statement or action must be true.

Ergo: anything a person (or a character) says or does when in states of emotional extremity, overwhelming grief, incapacitating pain, exhaustion, illness, head injury, is Peeling Back the Facade of Goodness to reveal the True Rottenness Underneath.

INT. CLARISSA’S APARTMENT. NIGHT.

And I did

He suspected (correctly) that I was dehydrated & was judging by the color of my tongue

But I fully heard “open your mouth” & thought “wow this stranger is going to spit in my mouth”