I’m trying to kill my husband
Nate’s convinced that I’m trying to kill him. And I’ve probably given him ample evidence of that fact, but I swear it’s not true.
It all started when I insisted that we put up the Christmas lights on the house. I’ve done it plenty of years in the past, and I even managed on my own one year (Nate nearly killed me himself for even attempting the feat) … But I digress …
Five years ago, I had a 6’10” boyfriend who was willing to help me hang lights. It was a perfect situation, given that it was my first year in the house, my neighbor had a tall ladder and I needed the extra foot-and-a-half more than my own height to help me get to the highest pitch. He owned his own business with flexible hours and was willing to let me instruct him one Wednesday afternoon on where to hammer in the nails and string lights across my rooftop. Thanks to said boyfriend’s height and hammering skills, I’ve been able to hang lights from little nails positioned across my rooftop ever since.
But this year, as Nate and I stood atop all sorts of precarious ledges to hang the first string of lights, we decided that the nails were no longer effective. It was time to break out the gutter hooks that have been kept in a box for the past two years. That meant going six inches further up and clipping gutter hooks to the very top of the roof line along the gutters. Nate’s 5’10” stature was lacking an entire foot compared to my previous light-hanging partner, and I SO missed those twelve additional inches! It would have made both our lives a little easier this year.
We struggled mightily as we took turns, stretching and reaching and balancing precariously. We were making good progress until we had to hang the gutter clips from the very tallest point—about 30 feet up from the cement driveway. After struggling to hang the clips and having quite a bit of difficulty, we decided to try another approach: climb onto the roof and try to hang the clips and the lights from the top down. The ladder didn’t quite reach the rooftop, nor did it give us a “safe” opportunity to climb onto the roof, so we opted to head up to the attic and climb out the attic window. I followed Nate out the window and scooted on my butt, foot by foot, across the rooftop—which is quite a bit steeper in actuality when your sitting on the roof and experiencing the angle. Looking up at it, it’s no big thing.
We managed to place a few clips; well, Nate managed to place a few clips. I just yelled at him to be careful and to not lean too far over the edge, because it’s a 30-foot drop to the concrete below. As Nate tried to grab onto the lights dangling from the last reachable hook by ladder, I headed back outside to watch him, hoping that the garbage cans would break his fall if he slipped.
The rooftop approach turned out to be a futile effort. He couldn’t reach the lights, and so I ended up scaling the front of our house to hang them from the clips he’d placed. The lights went up, neither of us went to the emergency room, and most importantly, Nate didn’t die from falling off the roof.
I must admit the end result makes me so happy. I love Christmas lights on my house, even if it means I have to take out an extra-large life-insurance policy.
