First, a forty foot extension ladder is really, really heavy. Even if it’s made of fiberglass.

Second, I need to rent either a small chainsaw or a good carbon-steel saw, to take down some branches that overhand our roof.

Third, I sweat. A lot (all right, I knew this one).

Fourth, my daughter is freaking adorable covered in mud, trying to help out.

Yes, that’s right. In an attempt to clean out the gutters of the second floor of our house, we rented a forty-foot fiberglass extension ladder, got it home on top of our hooptie, and managed – with an astounding amount of effort – to place it properly against the top floor. I was only able to complete one full side of the house (I did the lower porch gutters about a month back), but also managed to clear a substantial amount of the limb overhang that was causing the problem in the first place (there’s a large branch that will require a good saw, which I don’t have).

We’ll have to rent another ladder some other day in order to finish the other three sides. I’m hopefull the 27 foot ladder at the store will do the job, since it will probably be considerably more manageable.

But next weekend, we’re building a rocket stove in our back yard! Whoo hoo! (something to do with all that new twiggy goodness lying all over the place!).