Sunday, October 22, 2006

Twelve-Step Program. Warning: Filth Alert

How to clean out the gutters on your MIL's rental house when it hasn't been done for several years and the mulch fills the entire length of the gutter clear up to the top and some of the weeds in there are a foot high and some of them are poison ivy and it's coming out in long lengths that look like huge snakes and it's been raining for over a week:

Step One: Take a shower and get all cleaned up before you start.
Step Two: Get a little tiny stepladder. Make sure it's so short that even standing on the top rung, very tall husband has to reach up really high to get to the gutters. The more awkward, the better.
Step Three: Place stepladder on sidewalk that goes around two of the four sides of the house.
Step Four: Watch very tall husband who is terrified of heights step up the ladder and start scooping out gutter-growth with your brand-new gardening trowel.
Step Five: Try to catch the long snaky mulchy ick in a wheelbarrow.
Step Six: Repeat steps two through five, until you get to a side of the house that doesn't have a sidewalk.
Step Seven: Place little tiny stepladder on bare ground.
Step Eight: Watch very tall husband try to climb it.
Step Nine: Dig bottom two rungs of stepladder out of soft wet ground.
Step Ten: Give up. It has to stop raining some time, and we'll try again when the ground dries out.
Step Eleven: Go back to our house and sweep filthy husband with broom before allowing him back inside. Advise same to undress in laundry room because those clothes are NOT coming up the stairs.
Step Twelve: Give filthy husband bar of lava soap in shower, because most of those plants were poison ivy.

Don't forget to say, several times, that he should have been using a taller ladder. He won't mind because he knows you're only trying to help.

I think some of those plants were oak trees and shagbark hickory. Some were blooming.

Maybe we should be doing this more regularly.