The perfect exercise

When I woke up this morning, Darr's cousin Amanda was on her way outside to shovel the snow off the driveway. I offered to help. And after about a half an hour of vigorous snow removal I conclude this is the perfect exercise. It is relatively low impact, no jarring impact on your joints. You use your core muscles to keep you balanced on the icy snow at the same time you throw the snow off the driveway, you use your legs and arms to push the snow, and you use your back and arm muscles to heave the snow over the snowbank. It's the most excellent combination of cardio and weight-training I've found to date. And because digging your car out of the snow is a necessity if you want to keep the job that allows you to pay your mortgage, that's all the motivation you need.

I do have a pic of our finished work but I'll have to wait until I return home to post it. Also, men are funny. My uncle-in-law (Darr's dad's brother) and Darr's dad both poked their heads out to watch us women shoveling the snow and as we neared the very end of our project, Darr's uncle Ron shouts out to us something like, "Don't worry about that, girls. Come on in. We'll finish it up." Um, what? And take all of the glory from my first snow shoveling experience? I don't think so. I'm proud to say Amanda and I completed the driveway ourselves. (Nicely done, Amanda*.)

*Not to be confused with Barry Manilow's "Mandy".