Ice, Ice, Baby...

The other day I was laying in bed half asleep, resting up before I headed off to the gym. I felt the house shake a little and thought I was dreaming. Suddenly, I heard a loud smash and sprang out of bed to see what possibly could have made such a loud noise. Joey was running out of his command center at the same time I came running down the stairs. We went to the door only to see the driveway was covered in large broken chunks of ice, some large enough that if they had hit my car, it would have been demolished. We started kicking the big pieces around, kind of like in the iceberg scene from Titanic. Then we thought how cool it would be to ride down the hill on one of the larger chunks of ice. Check it out...

So in this picture you will notice a few things:
1) The huge chunk of ice we wanted to ride down the hill on.
2) The huge chunk of ice behind me under my car.
3) How close this ice came to completely wrecking the Subaru.
4) That I am looking up and not at the camera.

Number 4 is my favorite point, as it leads into the next portion of this story. As I was sitting on my ice-sled, I glanced up and realized that not even half of the ice on the roof had fallen and we were playing right where it hadn't yet fallen. We decided the car needed to be moved ASAP, but first we had to clear the huge ice chunks out of the way. Joey pushed the huge unliftable chunks with a rake if he couldn't smash them, and I kicked and threw the other pieces that I could move (Tough Mudder watch out). We moved the Subaru out of the driveway and proceeded upstairs to "take care" of the rest of the ice that was hanging off the roof, which appeared as if it could fall at any second and smoosh Dodge or anyone else that tried to come in through the side door.

Lucky for us, the bathroom window opens right to where the ice was hanging off of the roof. We opened the window, Joe took the rake and began hitting the ice. Nothing happened after several good blows, but then finally we heard it rumble and knew it was coming down. The ice fell in a massive solid sheet for several seconds. I thought for a moment that Joey might get ripped out of the window if the rake he was holding got stuck in the fall. That Joe is smart though and threw it out as it all came down with a huge (and very satisfying) crash. We kind of both squealed with excitement in the moment before we were able to safely pop our heads out the window to see exactly what had happened. This is what had happened...

So... as you can see, this massive ton of ice completely owned our side porch. Being an optimist, I think we are lucky we took the situation into our control and nothing other than the porch and a crazy lawn ornament were injured. Not knowing how to tell my father about the remodel, I simply texted him the above picture (no words needed). His concern was more for the little light located to the right of the door than the porch itself, which I found odd. Luckily, the light-bulb had simply died and had been promptly replaced upon my return home that evening.

Prior to this event, a strange and exceptionally ugly lawn ornament sat on the corner of the railing acting as a small beacon of light to welcome our friends and family. I loathed this thing more than anything in our house. It was a 2 foot tall, metal rooster with art deco shaped limbs and a blue lit orb for a belly, which he apparently played beats on with the drumsticks he held with his wings... what the?!?!?! I am not even joking and this is a disgustingly accurate description of the little thing. I cringe every time I picture it. But anyways, this was one casualty of the ice crash and I was so ecstatic that it didn't come down to me throwing it away when my Dad was working or something. Maybe I could have told him we brought it to the "farm" or something. After all, he did say that about a stray cat I adopted as a child. Oh how I digress...

So Joe and I got a real good adrenaline rush out of this whole ordeal. Dead porch, dead lawn ornament and the broom we threw up there trying to break icicles a few days back had come back down too! Little did we know, it wasn't yet over. That night we went out to dinner and upon our return, we we astonished that my Dad had dug the rooster out of the wreckage and gathered his broken, blue, orb belly and had tried to bend and piece it back together and there it sat on what remained of the railing.

Today, this funky rooster resides comfortably inside above the kitchen sink. Though his belly may be broken, he remains a solid part of the Melillo family.