In which Eeyore is Very Brave
Feb. 10th, 2010 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSometimes, even after LI years, I can still be surprised. Even by myself.
Especially by myself, perhaps.
Also by other people, though: like the guys in the DIY store (I nearly said "the old guys", before I remembered that they really can't be that much older than I am - oops!) who apparently know exactly who I am and where I live, even though I am very far from a regular customer.
"Wait, what?" you are thinking. "DIY store? Chaz? Even with the disclaimer, this is ... an unlikely picture," I hear you say to yourself.
Hah. Sometimes I still surprise other people. I can be oddly practical, on odd occasions. When I know what I'm doing, I can pretty much do it.
On this occasion, I was going in for masking tape, to go around the door surround--
Oh, wait. Let me backtrack.
Last you heard, I was muttering about having to haul huge heavy bookcases around, and panicking about the quantity of water falling into my house, yes?
Well. M'friend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
frumpo phoned, to ask if I needed help with bookcases. I explained that I had already shifted the big bad one downstairs, which was the worst of 'em, but that the reason there were so many books in piles in the dining room in danger from the floods was that I'd moved them out of the hallway bookcase in order to paint the hallway, which I had not done, and maybe it would still make sense to get that done before I shifted 'em all again...
When we had agreed that that did make sense, Mark murmured that perhaps he could bring his neighbour's ladders round, and we could have a look at the gutters...
So, yup. Suddenly I was painting. I always do practical things when I'm nervous.
I was just finishing the first coat of primer on the new fibreboard door-surround (is that an architrave?) when Mark arrived. With the ladders, which turned out to be almost exactly too short. Twenty foot of extended ladder plus six-foot-plus of man ought not to be too short to reach the guttering of a two-storey house, but my house is surprisingly tall. I could, by balancing and stretching and clinging to the gutter-rim, just get my head above said rim, to see the half-frozen slush and vile black gunk and slipping slates that conform my gutter. I couldn't see any worse obstruction, but nor could I do anything about what I could see.
Until I had abrainwave suicidal notion, that I could use the ladders to set the stepladder atop the flat roof of the bay window, and climb up that. The flat roof was ... all ice, and barely wide enough, and uncertainly strong. Nevertheless. We did that, with Mark holding what he could as steadily as he might, while I wielded broom-handle and trowel and bucket wherever I could reach.
Which wasn't far in either direction - my house is double-fronted, and there's only the one bay window - but it may just have been the crucial bit. We don't know, and won't until the next rain or snow occurs. In the meantime, though, the drips seem to have dried up; and there was an observable dribble coming down the downpipe when we'd done. Whether that constituted a change, I can't say. I hadn't thought to check beforehand. As I say, we wait to see.
Meantime, though, I have learned that I am no longer scared of heights, in the way I used to be as a halfling. So long as I'm tolerably secure in my footing and have one hand attached to something, I seem to be unexpectedly comfortable at height. Possibly foolhardy, even: I think Mark was a little ... disturbed, but I was confident. Careful, but confident. So long as I kept my imagination in a bottle ("this is how people kill themselves, y'know, doing stupid things on ladders, overstretching..." - intellectually I gave myself a couple of nasty moments, but I still wasn't physically scared), I was fine up there. Which is interesting to me.
The boys are fed up, because they've been shut away from the wet paint all day. I suppose I should go and let them out. I also suppose that I shall do no work today. I think I may sit in my big comfy chair with any cat that will have me, drink the rest of this bottle of wine and read The Count of Monte Cristo for a while. I think I've earned it.
Especially by myself, perhaps.
Also by other people, though: like the guys in the DIY store (I nearly said "the old guys", before I remembered that they really can't be that much older than I am - oops!) who apparently know exactly who I am and where I live, even though I am very far from a regular customer.
"Wait, what?" you are thinking. "DIY store? Chaz? Even with the disclaimer, this is ... an unlikely picture," I hear you say to yourself.
Hah. Sometimes I still surprise other people. I can be oddly practical, on odd occasions. When I know what I'm doing, I can pretty much do it.
On this occasion, I was going in for masking tape, to go around the door surround--
Oh, wait. Let me backtrack.
Last you heard, I was muttering about having to haul huge heavy bookcases around, and panicking about the quantity of water falling into my house, yes?
Well. M'friend
frumpo phoned, to ask if I needed help with bookcases. I explained that I had already shifted the big bad one downstairs, which was the worst of 'em, but that the reason there were so many books in piles in the dining room in danger from the floods was that I'd moved them out of the hallway bookcase in order to paint the hallway, which I had not done, and maybe it would still make sense to get that done before I shifted 'em all again...When we had agreed that that did make sense, Mark murmured that perhaps he could bring his neighbour's ladders round, and we could have a look at the gutters...
So, yup. Suddenly I was painting. I always do practical things when I'm nervous.
I was just finishing the first coat of primer on the new fibreboard door-surround (is that an architrave?) when Mark arrived. With the ladders, which turned out to be almost exactly too short. Twenty foot of extended ladder plus six-foot-plus of man ought not to be too short to reach the guttering of a two-storey house, but my house is surprisingly tall. I could, by balancing and stretching and clinging to the gutter-rim, just get my head above said rim, to see the half-frozen slush and vile black gunk and slipping slates that conform my gutter. I couldn't see any worse obstruction, but nor could I do anything about what I could see.
Until I had a
Which wasn't far in either direction - my house is double-fronted, and there's only the one bay window - but it may just have been the crucial bit. We don't know, and won't until the next rain or snow occurs. In the meantime, though, the drips seem to have dried up; and there was an observable dribble coming down the downpipe when we'd done. Whether that constituted a change, I can't say. I hadn't thought to check beforehand. As I say, we wait to see.
Meantime, though, I have learned that I am no longer scared of heights, in the way I used to be as a halfling. So long as I'm tolerably secure in my footing and have one hand attached to something, I seem to be unexpectedly comfortable at height. Possibly foolhardy, even: I think Mark was a little ... disturbed, but I was confident. Careful, but confident. So long as I kept my imagination in a bottle ("this is how people kill themselves, y'know, doing stupid things on ladders, overstretching..." - intellectually I gave myself a couple of nasty moments, but I still wasn't physically scared), I was fine up there. Which is interesting to me.
The boys are fed up, because they've been shut away from the wet paint all day. I suppose I should go and let them out. I also suppose that I shall do no work today. I think I may sit in my big comfy chair with any cat that will have me, drink the rest of this bottle of wine and read The Count of Monte Cristo for a while. I think I've earned it.