Parties and ladders

Today has been a bit of a lazy day. I have spent a ton of time sitting on the front porch with the laptop reading TKT's novel (about half way through now) while listening to Joni Mitchell (a blog post all on its own.) This was kind of needed as we had folks over last night as kind of the last hurrah for my birthday this year. One thing I really wanted this year was to have some people over just for fun and drinks and whatever might happen. It was a fun night with some of the people closest to me and those that are not quite as close but are well on their way. My mom took a lot of pictures but I don't think I'll post them as I don't think it's fair to post pictures of people on the internet without their permission (except for Heidi and Anna, naturally.) So that having been said, here's a picture that was taken of Heidi and me last night.

And here's one of Anna with the ever popular mini-Coke bottles. She was so sad that there were none left over last night we went out to the store and bought another six-pack today.

We drank a lot of booze. As Heidi said, we could have done with twice the booze and half the pop, but it's all good. We took all the bottles back today, got gas for the car and cat food for the felines. All riveting stuff, let me tell you. But the highlight of the day was the changing of the burnt out floodlights on the garage.

Several years ago (at least two winters ago, by Heidi's estimation) the floodlights on the garage burned out. Heidi went out and bought compact fluorescent replacements, but they have languished in the cupboard since their purchase. It has never been high on my priority list, even though I knew that it would be an easy job. Truth be told, I didn't want to get on the ladder.

But today I decided that I needed to say that I accomplished SOMETHING (especially after Heidi almost single handedly transformed our kitchen last week), so for reasons unexplained, I decided to tackle the floodlights. I went over to my neighbor's house and asked him if I could borrow his extension ladder. I brought it home and after a bit of trial and error, figured out how to extend it. I got it set up against the garage and then came the really hard part: climbing the ladder.

I am not particularly afraid of heights, but for some reason, being on a ladder scares the ever loving shit out of me. I must have fallen off of one in a previous lifetime because there is certainly no logical reason for it. The small step ladders you use in the house don't bother me much because you really don't get that high on those, but extension ladders and any ladder that you can use to get on a roof is just really too much for me. Add to this the fact that I had to not only carry the new light bulb with me while climbing, but then had to unscrew the old one and then change it out. The descent on the ladder, carrying the old bulb, about did these 36 year old nerves in. Even with Heidi down at the bottom steadying the ladder, all I could see were visions of my broken body on the cement below. I pretty much sweat bullets the entire time.

That's the thing about phobias though. They don't make sense. As Heidi pointed out to me, a fall of that ladder would probably just break my leg or arm or both. Inconvenient, yes, but hardly life threatening. Still, I did not enjoy my time on the ladder. I am glad those damn bulbs are changed though. One more goddamn monkey off my back.