Like all of our readers we were inundated by the Christmas snow. It was at once beautiful but challenging because it radically changes your lifestyle and you do have to get out to buy fresh food.

So I tried to get out. By shoveling.

Dumb move.

After five minutes of hard labor I threw the snow shovel back in the barrel and vowed never to do that again.

I no longer have any desire to build a snowman either. Even though I know there are lots of homeless ones and a lot of pipes I smoked have been waiting patiently in a box in the garage to be useful again.

Then I got an e -mail of a giant igloo my grandkids built in their Federal Way front yard. It was so huge son Tim wanted to move his brother in law into it. They even had lights in it and even though everything in it is sagging, the igloo is almost recognizable at this writing.

That gave me an idea on how to get the snow away from the driveway.

Just put some shovels in a barrel and wait for a gang of teenagers to walk by and offer them cookies and the joy of being building contractors by building the only igloo in the neighborhood. And I would sweeten the plan by putting their pictures in the paper. If that was not enough I could offer them some old doorknobs and maybe a dead rat or even let them paint my fence next spring. That stuff worked for Tom Sawyer. Pretty enticing.

Then I waited for maybe five minutes and not a boy walked by so I grabbed a shovel and shortly quit again and went in the house silently praying it would melt by itself . That worked. My own brother -in -law pulled in minutes later, unloaded his luggage and dug my car out for me. Prayer does work. And he graciously turned down my offer of a pair of neat old doorknobs and a rusty hinge.