Frozen

I mean: Would you tell a journalist a story you don't want to tell?

When I was very little, I believed Loch Ness was about the size of Best Lake in Watchung, and I thought that finding Nessie would be a relatively simple matter of draining the water and hauling the beast from the muck. #Duh.

What am I so afraid of?

The other day I was at the top of the damn driveway, swinging an 8-pound splitting maul — who among us doesn’t have an 8-pound splitting maul? Love that thing — at a 6-inch-thick ice sheet created by our Whack! local Whack! water Whack! utility. Long story. Not interesting. Whack!

The maul didn’t work all that well. Prior to that, the busted snow shovel. And the rest of the arsenal: the ax end of the maul, the soil shovel, the garden spade and — the big guns — the Root Slayer, a weapon — excuse me, tool — very capable of cutting off one’s foot, but so long as one isn’t doing that, it’s a hell of a good time. If you want to decimate the roots of a hateful ash tree when the emerald ash borers are slacking on the job, this is the tool for you.