After working on my Mom’s taxes I started putzing around with my snow sculpture. I had already heaped a couple mounds of snow which should have been a lot more work than trimming the heaps today. You wouldn’t know it if you could feel my back. Five hours of chopping hard snow off of those heaps took a toll. Such work has had a similar effect for years but at age sixty after abandoning regular exercise to fight the Red Plan I’m a bit of a cream puff.
I had stopped working on the sculpture about three weeks ago making use of a heat wave to pile snow onto the two heaps. The taller one was still too short so I had to mix water and snow this morning to pile it up higher. To do this I cooked the snow. First I gathered up a couple cubic yards of fresh snow from my backyard and brought it next to the sculpture. Next I poured twenty or thirty gallons of water on the pile then I shoveled more fresh snow on top to insulate the stew and let the water diffuse. I ignored this for about four hours and went to work chopping snow off other sections of the sculpture.
At about 3PM I scrapped off the insulating snow and then shoveled out the sticky snow and began adding it to the tallest pile. When I finished the tallest pile was still too short and in need of bulking up.
I could tell this because I had sculpted a small version of my planned sculpture out of modelling clay. Holding the modeling clay close to my face in front of the heaps of snow there was a mismatch. I’ll have to cook some more snow tomorrow and bulk it up some more. I’ll start the day with a couple of advils.
When I limped inside Claudia asked me if I was done. I told her it would take me at least another day to finish. That’s if I’m lucky. I hope there are no change orders. My back couldn’t take it.
