And when I do get a chance to cross it, I will have to RUN. I think I can count on one hand how many times over the last 20-odd years that I have been able to cross that street without RUNNING. And tonight, after I RAN across the street, I had to galumph through about, I dunno 6-8 inches of old, dirty snow to get to the sidewalk. And, although running is not my chosen form of exercise, I CAN run, pretty dern fast at least for a short distance, even though I will celebrate my golden birthday in 2008.

Oh, heck, I had a whole long diatribe about how some of my neighbors were threatened with TICKETS for not cleaning up the snow cement that the SNOWPLOWS left behind. AFTER they (the neighbors, that is) had already done all the shoveling that they thought they had to do under the byzantine snow removal rules of the Planet Ann Arbor. I picture a small, round, bald, red-faced man standing on a chair yelling at his minions to just “ticket them all!” Yeah, stereotyping again. 😉

But I don’t want to write all of that. Folks, this is MICHIGAN. It’s WINTER! SNOW HAPPENS! We all have to pull together. And sometimes make some personal sacrifices. Small ones, in the grand scheme of things. You planet officials have to lead the way. If we don’t know the letter of the law we can’t follow it. So PUBLISH IT. I know. You have it on your website. That’s great. But I have yet to meet anyone who has said (oh, in about October), “hey, did you check out the rules for snow removal on The Planet Ann Arbor yet?”

Whoever it was who made the phone call that resulted in my neighbors being spuriously ticketed even after they had completely cleaned their sidewalk: We all care about handicapped people and kids and whoever cannot negotiate snow on the wheelchair ramps. I won’t even talk about my dad’s last seven weeks on the Planet Earth when he could only travel *anywhere* via ambulance. 😐 But y’all have to remember that when a Planet like Ann Arbor gets dumped with so much snow that the plows can’t keep up with it, even those of us who are able bodied and healthy cannot necessarily keep up with it either. There are frail elderly neighbors who cannot shovel. And other, younger people with diseases like emphysema that make it impossible for them to even walk down the street. Pease give us all a bit of a break.

Love y’all
Garbage Woman

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.