There's snow way around it...

Today's snowfall put new meaning into the second syllable.

It was one of those heavy, wet snows that come when it's not terribly cold. The stuff clumped and layered over the tarp on the car shelter that I had constructed this summer and reinforced with chicken wire this fall in anticipation of one of those heavy, wet snows that come...

When I came home tonight, I saw that the center peak of the car shelter I made out of those thin metal tubes of a former dining tent had collapsed down onto J's car. I got out a stepladder and a rake and removed as much of the snow as I possibly could. By the time I finished, the general roofline was flat, but at least not sagging onto the car.

This, of course, means that any further snows will simply repeat the process. And on the 50 degree days that are forecast to follow later this week, the water will pool in the tarp, and flow down through the slits that I had to put in it this summer when it rained and remained undrained.

A real, honest-to-gosh car shelter would have cost upwards of $800, which is money that only the government has at this point. So I'm forced to consider how I am going to cope with having a saggy, baggy tarp that has to be harder to shovel off than the car would be if I just took the whole thing down. But such is the problem with designing for assisted living.

There may yet be hope. This weekend, weather permitting, I shall betake me to the local domicile improvement emporium in the hope of finding structural reinforcements. A couple of two-by-fours artfully fastened by plywood braces should do it, wouldn't you say?