Remedial snowman building

Today I was less of a baby parent and more of a dog parent. For starters, I spent lunch at work eating a god-awful ramen noodle "just add water" concoction and missed my usual noontime date with Babe-O. Then, because I had some client work to do this evening, Mom-O took over the bathtime ritual and left me to my own devices. 

Before long, the baby was sleeping happily and I was done with my work and puttering around the house with no one to play with.

At about ten o'clock, I headed outside with three dogs and a splash of whiskey in a coffee cup.

I knew it had been snowing outside, but it wasn't until the back door wouldn't open all the way that I realized just how much. Last night I cleared off the back deck and spend a little more than an hour snow-blowing and shoveling out front. By the time I went outside tonight, it didn't look like I had done either.

I started over on the back deck, first clearing the door area and then brushing the rails, carving out the steps, and doing all the heavy lifting. As I did this, the dogs just watched me, which was odd, until I realized that there was so much snow in the back yard that they couldn't even move around out there. The littlest and most enthusiastic one would hop along like a furry swimmer doing a very cold butterfly stroke, but the other two weren't having it.

So with my sweat pants tucked into my boots, one black glove, and one blue mitten (I was in a hurry to get out there), I started trudging. Oh, and I'm not usually a sweatpants kind of guy, but in the few minutes I spent with Babe-O today, she managed to pee all over my jeans.

Anyway, I trudged my way through the almost waist-deep snow until there was a big oval. This activity was much more tiring then I expected.

Once the oval was in place, the dogs had a blast running around like greyhounds at the track. The big dog was the only one tall enough to see over the edge of the trench, so unless you were standing up on the deck, you couldn't even see the little dogs. But there they were, going around and around until they were completely whipped.

At that point, I was roasting from trudging around in circles and didn't want to go inside yet, so I made them stay out a little longer to keep me company. I planned to stand out on the deck and finish my drink, but by this time it was thoroughly frozen to the deck rail that I couldn't even pick it up. When I finally did pry the thing off of the wood, my mitten-wearing hand lost its grip and send the thing flying into a three-foot snow bank. My littlest dog found it immediately and signaled the location like he had just spotted a downed bird.

With my (empty) cup perched safely on the doorstep, I figured I would take a few minutes and make a snow man. Then, if there was time, maybe a snow baby and a snow BMW.

Well, it turns out that I couldn't make a snow golf ball, much less a snow BMW. After a few minutes, I thought back a little bit and realized that to the best of my knowledge I've never made a snowman in my life.

What kind of childhood rip-off is that? As of my sixteenth birthday I could tell you how to shoot a potato through a garage door, open a beer bottle with the edge of a coffee table, and pull a quick U-turn using the parking brake. But apparently I missed that day in third grade where they teach you how to make a damn snowman.

I guess that's what HR types refer to as "distinct skill sets."

After staggering back inside, my skill-rich wife promised to take me outside for a lesson in snowman building later this week. Which is good, because otherwise I'd eventually have to endure Babe-O's what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-my-daddy-and-why-is-he-using-duct-tape-and-a-basketball-to-make-me-a-snow-man look a few years down the road.