There’s nothing like suddenly finding yourself “in charge” of basically everything in a household to make you see clearly.

As for most couples, or families, jobs/tasks get distributed over time either formally or informally; based on skills, experience or plain-old “if I don’t do it, no one will”.  We don’t often take the time to really discuss these things unless the person doing the task in question is fed up, not around for whatever reason or on strike (trust me, it does happen!)  Some tasks are doled out (mostly to the kids as they age and are given more responsibilities) and others just seem to get done.  The ones that seem to just get done have “shown their face” so to speak in the past couple of months.

This last group is the one I’m concerned with today.

I honestly didn’t put much thought into the tempo in any way, shape or form.  Not my job.  It goes up when it has to, the excess snow is removed as needed and it goes down when it must.  Not my department.  The boys were in charge of this.  By boys, I mean Mick, Iain and Aidan working together to set it up (well, the framework, anyway).  Somehow Mick often ended up putting up the tarp mostly by himself ~ his fault, he just had to insist on their help.  The removal of the snow?  I just never noticed when/if it got done.  Of course, this depends on the amount of snowfall in any particular winter. Some years it is not an issue… As some of you know, this year it became an issue when my frame started popping out because of the weight of the snow.  It is NOW my department ~ until I can get the boys to pay attention to their surroundings. Yeah. Right. A work in progress.

Though I have been watching it grow over the past months, I’ve not bothered to shovel the back balcony. Zeke is a big boy and can easily climb up and over.  There was an issue of closing the door properly at one time so I cleared that out, but the rest?  Nah… This would NEVER have happened under Mick’s watch.  Another thing I’ve taken for granted.

There are many things that will fall on my shoulders (or on the families’ and friends’ that I may just have to draft into helping!) ~ many I’m aware of and some will show up when necessary.  Please note I am not whining here; I am just acknowledging just how much Mick did for us.

If there is an afterlife and if, once there you can look back and see what’s going on, then know that I owe you a big “Thank you”, Mick MacIsaac.  I should have said it more often…