It Does Beat The Alternative...

...but getting old still sucks.

I was helping a neighbour with a little paint project today.  She's in her 80s and I prefer that it's me on the ladder painting her eaves.  Plus, it gets me off the couch, which is not a bad thing. 

So, while we have he ladder out, she graciously allows me to use it to clear out a little ecosystem that's grown up in one of my eaves troughs.

Now this particular gutter is just above the roof of my back porch and I've cleaned it out plenty of times over the years when enough muck builds up that things start growing there, but it's been a few years since I've noticed that it needed tending.  This year, it's trying to grow a whole forest up there.

The back porch has a low slope roof that I've been on a dozen times over the years.  I usually get out there through my little bathroom window, but it's been several years and more than a few pounds since I last did this.  There's at least the fear, if not the real possibility of a Winnie the Pooh situation here.

 

Oh, #%@^& bother.

So I get the ladder up beside the roof, clamber up and put one foot on the roof, ready to lightly hop onto the low slope roof.  I've done this literally hundreds of times in my capacity as a telecom technician.  That one foot gets over there and alarm bells go off in my head.  

Now, usually, it's the other way around.  I usually wind up going to do something that my brain is convinced I can do and it's my body that lets me down.  Not this time.  My aging brain recognized something that is now officially beyond me and flat out refused to let that other foot step off the ladder.  

Roofs are now officially off my "to do" list and on to my "I gotta pay somebody to do that" list.

Getting old sucks.