Jason writes, "two chores I find extremely satisfying are bagging groceries and (especially) mowing the lawn."
Not that it matters a whole hell of a lot but I concur.
After a successful stint at bagging groceries in my high school days I find it a necessity to "bag" my own food. Primarily because most people in the today's grocery industry are morons who don't know what good bagging is — the vocation has lost a lot of it's craftsmanship. Secondarily, I beat my best friend in a grocery store "bag-off" tournament to become that years local champion (I lost the state competition by 3/100th of a second to the dork from Wasilla, the latch-key home of the Warriors and bitter rival to Palmer, the distinguished home to the mighty and magnificent Moose).
I had the fortune to grow up in an area where land was abundant and in huge quantities and my parents owned a whole acre of it. Later in life I would find out that land ownership was great until you had to mow it. This was before the days of riding law mowers mind you. An eight hour day was required to get that beast groomed and looking good enough to be the poster lawn for Scotts products. Which is something of a feat as grass is a hard beast to tame in Alaska and sod is mostly known to the local population as something the British say in those PBS shows on Sunday evening. Still, there are few things better than the look and smell of a well mown yard.
Yet no matter how much I enjoy those occupations, nothing beats shoveling snow. Especially when you're out there in the middle of a deep snowfall, trying to keep an area free of the over abundance of white fluff which seems unlimited in quantity as it blankets the area around you. The world slows down and gets ghostly quiet as the snow continues to fall and accumulate. Even the commotion of a shovel scrapping against the ground looses it's audible bite and starts to sound more like a metronome than a digging device.
As far as laborious tasks go, shoveling snow hits on all cylinders: the combination of hot and cold (sweating on the inside while freezing on the outside), the building small mountains of snow to impressive heights or maybe it's the ability to carve and sculpt paths and areas in ways that are only available during the dark and cold months of winter.
Perhaps science can better explain why these things are satisfying but I do know this to be sure, I miss the snow, and the shoveling of it.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Absolutely. That you can eventually hear the snow fall is a beautiful thing.
Wow, what a relief to find other people enjoying the same chores.
Sadly our winters have become warmer and we don't have all that much snow anymore, so I'm planning to move somewhere colder, like Sweden.
I'll ditto the snow shoveling. Took me 2 hours once to dig out my car and I loved every minute of it. I'd do it as my workout everyday if I could.
Ah, bagging… I too enjoyed the sport of bagging in my early high school days. And, I agree, baggers don't care anymore. It is just tossing groceries to them. The bleach never goes in with the crackers... I never joined a competition, but I felt I could hold my own against the speedy checkers.
I think every person should be involved with the service industry in some form in their youth.
Being in Austin, snow is an extreme rarity. Sounds exhilirating though!
Bastard, I almost had ya. Next time you're here in New York City, we're having a bag-off rematch!
They can all be fairly zen activities, can't they? I'm like that with grass mowing, as well as vacuuming.
Packing things, for movement or storage, tops my list. I think it's the puzzle-solving aspect of it all -- trying to find the right arrangement of this and that (flip this over, place this inside of that, and put this on the bottom instead of the side), such that everything remains organized, and yet, takes up the least amount of space. For extra fun, use milk-crates, which offer no physical flexability ("zero-deformation") for odd shaped items, and which can be stacked ever so neatly once you've become a packing grandmaster.
Though I hated mowing the yard in my youth (we had a complicated acre lot w/ various trees, a picket fence and a small pond), I actually appreciate the results of a hard morning's work in the yard now I actually own one. I also agree with the above comment about the value of work in a service field, even though I think it fosters a deeper distaste for the general public.
My favourite job is pruning. I could do that for hours.
So, where in Alaska did you live? If you mentioned it, I'm not remembering. Some of my favorite shoveling I did was when i lived in Alaska (in Haines). Such a beautiful and extremely personal experience.
Tim, even with a new Dyson, vacuuming doesn't do it for me although discovering what it's sucked up in the carpet does have it's Bill Nye the Science Guy moments.
Brian, not only did I name the town I am from but our bitter rival as well. It's possible you didn't recognize the names as you lived so far, far away in Haines (a place I have yet to visit in person but can vouch for it's beauty).
I do not think you used the term chore correctly. A chore is something unpleasant. If you enjoy it so much it's not a chore; it's an accomplishment. Or something along those lines. Take it and run.
As for what 'chores' I enjoy, I must say that I detest mowinhg the lawn. Maybe, like Reuben, I hate it because I'm still in my 'youth' (I'm only 17), and don't have a yard to call my own yet. I love shoveling snow, though. I can't wait for winter to get here.
"I miss the snow, and the shoveling of it"
You can come and visit me any time you want. Bring the family, bring the dog, bring aunt Betty I don't care... just fill yer boots clearing my driveway.
Greg - Sheepishly, yes I recognize the town - Palmer. I have stayed all of one night there on my way to staying with some friends in Soldotna. And Wasilla caught my eye too, but immediately left my brain for greener pastures. Only later when you blatantly said Alaska did my mind come back from those green pastures and slap me back to reality. Yes, Haines is a beautiful area that I miss much.
Mmmm, shoveling snow. Looking forward to doing that over the next few months. Which reminds me, I need to go purchase a decent shovel.
My favorite part was laying on my back on the nice new pile of snow. There's something about staring up into the gray sky with the flakes coming directly at you. And if you listen carfully, you can hear each flake as it lands.
With all due respect, I think you're all insane. :)
I hate mowing the lawn. I hate smelling like a mix of gasoline and grass. I hate the allergies the grass causes. I hate dodging angry bees and wasps. I hate trying to mow close enough to ant pile for a neat mow but not actually over the mound, spraying angry ants into the bag that attack my arms and hands when I empty the bag.
I've only shoveled snow once, and I didn't much enjoy it. I had places to be but had to chew through snow (and it wasn't even that much snow, since I live in Dallas).
Bagging groceries though I do have to admit to enjoying. I like the sound of it -- the crackle of the bag followed by the satisfying thunk of the grocery on the surface.
i have to agree about the bagging of the groceries. i spent my high school years at a small-town grocery story bagging up the groceries for the people in the town whose names i all knew. now i go to a grocery store in the town where i work and the other day, while bagging my own, i could hear the baggers scrambling to make it over my way so i wouldn't have to do it myself. i'd finished by the time they arrived. no-one does it like those who actually care. when i shop in the city near my apartment i always self-checkout. so i can bag my own. there's nothing like fitting everything you've bought into the bag just right so you've got one hand free and one hand cradling a nice-smelling paper sack to empty from your counter when you get home.
Here's joy: Take a big jar of coins, dump them on the table, sort, and roll them up. Chaos to order.
I remember the first winter with my new wife. Our first apartment. First big snow. We shoveled the walkway. The sidewalk. Oh look - we can shovel out our car, too! Heh. Those were the days. A winter in Queens just ain't the same.
Well, in that case, this winter you can come over and shovel my driveway, a task I HATE doing, and then in the summer you can come and mow the lawn. Any chance I could get you right now for raking the leaves?
Shoveling snow, particularly at night while it's still snowing. That blanketing quiet and the gentle tapping of the ice crystals. The exercise, the directness of the activity, and sense of achievement. The anal retentive neatness of well-shoveled deep snow really appeals to me.
I love it! Unless it's 6:00 AM and I'm trying to get to work.
OK, I guess I can agree that snow shoveling has its nicer elements. But I remember getting a pretty sore back after twenty minutes or so, that part wasn't so much fun. Lawn mowing doesn't do much for me. Though I do admire a nice lawn.
The bag-off I remember well. A great event in two lives as I remember (at least great as far as high school events go). Great for Greg as a glorious victory, great for Mitch as the subject of his first video production.
Man those were the days. I remember that the manager made you bye some socks because you had the old "roll up look". and that checker that was playing the bag pipes for your entrance. I wanted to follow in my brothers foot steps, but one egg. One stinking EGG!!! one out of dozen.I told them that the customer would care if it was one egg, but they didn't buy it. Whatever. stupid contest. good job on the video mitch. Joe Satriani.LOL
I found shoveling highly overrated, especially with a very large driveway and 200 feet of sidwalk on a corner lot.
But my oh my how great it was to pull the cord on the gas powered huge snow blower from the Farm 'n Fleet store. What a sense of power in blowing that snow 15 feet high and of course out into the street from where the snow plow pushed its load into our drive way.
Snow blowing was for me. The three boys did the shoveling from the steps.
Speaking of vocations losing their craftsmanship, and therefore elitism, let's talk about English. "It's" is a conjunction of "it is" (or
"it has" in past tense), not a possessive pronoun. The possessive form lacks an apostrophe: "its", like other possessive pronouns in the English language: your/yours, his, her/hers, our/ours, and so on.
Raking.
Hmm. Mowing the lawn and bagging have in their favour the satisfaction that at some given point you can say: "Yes, I'm finished." But -- shovelling snow? Do you not find that there's always a bit more to do, even if it's not snowing any more?
As for me, my favourite chore would be tidying up and filing papers, precisely on the grounds that it is completely futile.
heh, I still bag groceries.. and I agree completely about morons that work in the industry.
Although I don't really bag groceries that often, I still work in the industry, and the kids ( adults too ) they hire, are just plain lazy.
For the most part the kids, don't really know what should go together and for the most part I had always thought it was common sense ?..
And then, there are they adults which are just lazy. They couldn't find work else where and are stuck there not caring. And then all these large grocery companies are too cheap to give anyone decent hours... encouraging the non caring.
As for shoveling snow, or mowing the lawn.. I don't do much of either, but the worst is when the dandylions grow back 15 minutes after you mow the lawn, or when your shoveling the driveway in the midst of a snow storm so you don't have to shovel like 4 feet of snow the next day.. but which is worse shoveling the driveway 16 times, with only a few inches, or shoveling once for 8 hours to remove the full 4 feet.. hmm..
here in tokyo self-bagging is the standard. They have no baggers, and the cashier will only occassionally give you a hand.
They even have bagging tables a little past the registers.
I think you are all high. After being a "bagger" for my first job, I will gladly wait and direct the kiddies who now have my old job. How one can do a decent job with plastic bags has always been a mystery - give me those nice square-cornered paper bags any day.
But shovelling snow - I would have to say it's a tie between stacking a couple cords of wood and shovelling as the worst outdoor jobs ever.
Splitting and stacking firewood is another great way to work, thanks for reminding me nod. When you've got a big stack of wood adn you know, I'm gonna be warm this winter with the beautiful sight and sound of a real fire. It's a satisfying feeling.
Ha! I was so excited to be the only person to describe the absolute joy of splitting and stacking firewood - all the way to James' comment at the absolute end. Ah well.
In no way diminishes the truth: splitting wood alleviates bad karma! Like Manjushri's sword the freshly sharpened axe-head, wedge and hammer, plough through trees, felled, for good purpose. Ahh...
While snow removal/displacement was a natural state of being for me (growing up on the Canadian prairies), I can easily overcome the satisfaction of throwing snow (which is pretty profound, though Yanks are unlikely to never understand,) for the satisfying sensation of holding the bound pubication in one's hands.
Come what might, come what may, there is nothing as fulfilling as holding a book/journal/magazine in your hands and saying (whatever your level of contribution) "I *made* this."
Sometimes, a blog approaches the sensation, but it always falls short. I sometimes miss my blog, but never as much as I miss the smell of freshly delivered journals or monographs ready for distribution.