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Monday, November 20, 2006

Is your house on fire, Clark?

Since everybody else is doing it, we decided to put our Christmas lights up on Saturday. We have never had a need for exterior lights before, so we had to buy some. (I swear I should just give all of my pay check that isn’t used on bills to Wal-Mart.) We picked out a set of lights that looked pretty slick and headed home.

I started putting our lights up on the roof that covers the porch. Luckily our neighbors had a ladder that they let us borrow. That was pretty helpful, since I’m not 9 feet tall. It turned out to be pretty easy. We found these hook things that you can stick under the shingles so you don’t have to staple the lights up. I don’t know if sticking things under your shingles is a bad idea or not, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt. If it messed it up, it’s nothing that a roll of duct tape wouldn’t fix. I got it all finished and took a step back to admire my work. Cool.

Since we have a two story house, just doing the porch roof wasn’t enough. I needed to do the roof of the house too. The ladder we had was 7 feet tall, and the roof is . . . really high, so I couldn’t exactly reach it on my tip toes. I had to get up on the porch roof. (Roof is a funny word. Roof. Ha ha.) This would have been no problem for me when I was younger. When I was a kid, I’d always climb up on our house to retrieve balls or whatever, and I’d just get off with no problem. I’m a little older than that now. I have acquired a fear of heights, death, paralyzation, impalement, broken limbs, sprained appendages, and boo boos. Eventually I got up the courage to get up on the roof.

Once I was up there, I realized it wasn’t so bad. That is after I got over the fear of the roof caving with me on it, tripping, and . . . pretty much anything. It was easier to put these lights up lights up because they were at eye level so I didn’t have to reach up to get the hooks in and then get the wire in the hooks. However, it took longer since I was using one hand to cling to anything I could get a hold of just in case the roof gave way. Maybe I’ve become too paranoid in my old age. Eventually I finished getting the lights on the roof. One problem was, I was still on the roof.

I would have just slept up on the roof, but Sam said something about hypothermia and rolling over and falling off the roof. I had to get down somehow. I considered my options, and eventually figured getting back on the ladder would be the best way to get down. Most people would have figured that out as common sense. I however do not have that sense, so I had to figure the ladder thing out by process of elimination. I took a look at scooting to the edge and jumping. Them I remembered that I’m old and I’d probably break something. So I pondered laying on my belly and sliding down slowly and just dropping down when I got far enough off the edge. (Yeah nothing could go wrong there.) I was really just being a pansy about the whole ladder thing because it was like two or three feet from the top of the roof. I eventually just got down on the ladder and made it safely to the ground.

I think I may have overcome my fear of heights. Getting on the roof doesn’t seem so bad now. That’ll be put to test before too long because we didn’t get enough lights, so I’ll need to put more on the roof.

I'll post some pictures when we're finished.

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