How to Get the Freaking Ice Off Your Freaking Satellite Dish

Overnight the ice storm coated my WiFi satellite dish: a very serious matter because WiFi is my freaking life. I suited up for freezing rain wondering how to de-ice it. Of course I should have sprayed it with Pam at the start of winter, but I forgot, and now the dish two-and-a-half feet wide and seven feet above the ground with a quarter-inch layer of ice on its face presented a problem. I had to restore my freaking WiFi. Whacking the ice with a stick or garden tool might damage the dish and then I'd have no WiFi for weeks until the satellite people from India got here. I could see myself telling them "I hit it with a rake." I'd have to melt the ice, not break it. Planting a stepladder there would be too treacherous.

My solution: Soak three rags in a bowl of hot water. Take the bowl, plus a worn-out corn broom kept on the porch to chase raccoons with, out to the dish. Wring out a warm rag and lay it over the broomstraws. Lift the broom overhead and rub the rag on the dish for about a minute until the rag loses all its heat. Replace it then with the next warm rag, and the next. Go back into the house, refill the bowl with hot water. Realize that the rags left freezing in the yard should be soaked in hot water too before re-using.

Bring the rags back into the freaking house, soak them in the bowl, bring the bowl back into the yard, wring out a freaking rag, put it on the freaking broomstraws, and keep wiping. The thinnest ice threatened to refreeze. I concentrated on the top third of the dish until it was clear. Went into the house for my can of Pam spray, lifted it overhead, tilted it heavenward, prayed and its spray reached exactly the top of the dish. Each time I melted another sector of ice, I Pammed it. Repeated this activity for 25 minutes, sometimes gently tapping the thickest ice with the broom handle and cracking its thinner edges just enough to broom the ice off the dish, bit by bit. Yay.

Brought rags and bowl into the house, hung the rags to dry, washed the bowl. Crunched across the frozen grass, picked up the broom and put it back on the porch. Tried the WiFi. It worked. It's now 1:30 p.m. and I myself can get to work.