I found this picture on a news site on the Internet; I imagine quite a lot of people viewed it. It took me a moment, though, to realize that was a dress sticking out from under the coat. This digger was a woman. My mother was a very good-looking woman, and, frankly, I don’t see the same lines of beauty in this woman’s face. I do see determination and my mother had that; she dug out after the blizzard of “78. She dug out every year – one shovelful at a time.

When she died, the people across the street told me at her visitation that the previous winter she had dug out a place for the mailman and the snowplows kept closing it up – so she climbed up on top of a snow ridge and wouldn’t let the next plows mess it up. She would have been 82 that year, and I’m certain she was dressed as if she could have been on the slopes at Aspen.

She had spunk and class; I have a temper and wear about anything. I’m certain I was a disappointment to her, but one thing though, I can shovel. Maybe that can be my epitaph.

Motivation eludes me. I know there are books on the subject; I could write one myself, with an afterword that stated, “Ha! Good Luck! If you needed to read this book, non-motivation is probably in your genes.” Of course, that would not be written because the book would not be written because of, well, go back and look at my very first sentence.

Where does this leave me? I would suspect it is not a good place, and that is unfortunate because, dontcha know, non-motivation will probably leave me right in it – -sort of like the lady whose body grew around a certain object in her bathroom. I know; disgusting; below AmeliaJake’s usual reference points.

I am actually chortling aloud at how low I have fallen. Maybe I can find an elevator, because, hey, you know, actually climbing stairs. It’s almost tempting to look around at the stuff on this level, but I did learn a lesson some years back that discourages that. Way back – decades back, long time ago, another galaxy, and so forth – I reasoned that if I were ever homeless I could go to jail and have my little cell and meals and reading material, and the occasional movie. Then I watched a documentary on a prison; do you know I saw inmates throwing food and bodily products through the bars at guards and other inmates walking by. I was stunned. Stunned. And the foul language, not to mention the bad grammar.

I realized dimples were probably not going to be an asset. It’s almost enough to motivate me to Plan B.