maintain

Time for home maintenance! As soon as I got home yesterday, I had to unship the extension ladder from its hanger in the garage, tote it around to the back of the house and set it up against the eaves that were clogged up. It’s really too bad you weren’t there to watch me. With an extension ladder in my hands, I’m a one-man Three Stooges show, knocking something over every time I make the slightest turn. Best show I ever put on was the time I shoved it right through a screen window.

But so far, the costs of the damage outweigh the costs of hiring a handyman to come do the work for me, so I keep on trying. This evening, I was trying to figure out why the rainwater was dribbling over the end of the eaves trough instead of going down the downspout. Doesn’t do much good to have a downspout that the water doesn’t go down. Turned out that the drain at the end of the trough was plugged full of those little twirlies that fall off maple trees. There were so many twirlies packed into a wad so tight that I had to take apart the elbow in the downspout to get them out.

I checked the other downspouts and found one more that was clogged by twirlies. The rest were good, and I was well-chuffed by the fact that I managed to walk the ladder all the way around the house without putting out a single window. Yay, me.