“What’s better to build aggravation than more aggravation”

Have you ever noticed how anger and frustration sometimes seems to beget more anger and frustration? We had our first real snow of the season the other day and I threw up the garage door to pull out our brand new snow blower and go to work. When we bought it on that balmy 60 degree day, I put it together, gassed it up, and made sure it worked. It ran like a champ, heck I could have ridden the thing up and down the street like a Harley if I’d wanted to.

At the time we’d bought the thing on sale, it was a great deal. Now I know why. Apparently when the temperature dips below freezing, it won’t start. I pulled and pulled on the cord, pumping the primer and fiddling with the choke, but nothing short of a defibrillator was going to coax that thing to life.

Frustrated and angry, I threw open the rear door of my jeep to grab my tool bag. I should have walked into the garage to get what I needed out of the tool box, but my Jeep was closer and I just wanted to grab the closest thing I had at hand.

I reached in and tore out my tools. When I say tore, I mean that literally. The bag was caught on the seat cover and when I jerked it out, the seat cover tore open like Velcro. I tried to piece the fabric back together in some sort of wishful belief that it would mend itself back together, but needless to say it was no use.

Turning back to the snow blower, I went to work trying to find out why the little monster wouldn’t start. I removed one of the small bolts holding on the shroud, then to my surprise, discovered just how dangerous this little piece of equipment must be. The designers must have been terrified of this thing getting loose, for it was held on by no less than 14 of the little chrome plated bolts. I methodically removed each of the little buggers, but when I came to the last one there was another surprise waiting for me. Apparently this particular bolt was so intrical to the operation, they decided to have it torked down by superman. The might have even added a dab of superglue or a spot weld for good measure. I worked on that last blot until I had it sufficiently rounded off and stripped beyond recognition, then had no choice but to give up and replace every one of the 14 bolts I had just removed.

Sufficiently defeated, I rolled the snow blower back into the garage then walked into the house to warm up (or cool off) before breaking out my trusty snow shovel. On the way in I slapped the button to the garage door opener out of habit, and as soon as I did I remembered the back of my Jeep was still open.

I reached for the button again but it was too late. Everything moved in slow motion. As I reached up I could see the door coming down onto the edge of the window, which was of course, perfectly positioned to bind just below the bottom rail of the door.

With one last groan of the garage door opener, it shattered, spraying glass everywhere. All I could do was stand there spraying obscenities out into the snowy wonderland outside. Oh well, at least my snow shovel was good or picking up the broken glass.

So tell me about the last “Day” you have had. Make me feel better about mine LOL. Have a great day and happy blogging.