Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A 16' ladder as a symbol of independence

If you were to look at the north side of my house right now, you'd see that I started to paint the trim. I started this project back in the spring. I picked a nice combination of a reddish brown and a warm tan out of a paint sample brochure and the two shades do look nice together.

However, you'd notice right away that the paint job stops about 7' off the ground. Yup, that's as high as I could get with my 4' step ladder. My neighbor (the same one who trimmed my trees the other day) offered the use of their 16' ladder, but I've never taken them up on it. I'm not sure why, but it probably has something to do with doing things for myself.

It probably also has something to do with how busy I've been teaching this class, but it's also true that for the last couple of years I didn't want to put too much money into this house because I didn't know how long I'd live here. Well, the answer to that question has changed to "for the foreseeable future" so now I'm starting to think about things I'd like to do and have for the place.

Somehow, the purchase of a 16 foot ladder is becoming symbolic both of me realizing I don't want to move any time soon, and also of trying to do things for myself. I have an old friend who is establishing a homestead in upstate NY (hers is the Blueberry Hills Homestead blog in my blog list and she posts often), and she turned me on to a few other blogs written by women who are doing that sort of thing by choice. I can't say my situation is just like that, but it looks like I could learn a thing or two here.

So, I'll be pricing ladders over the new few weeks.

1 comment:

  1. It's a nice sense of community, finding other people doing the same thing! I read more blogs than are shown. Here's some:
    http://knottyoakhomestead.blogspot.com/
    http://antiquityoaks.blogspot.com/
    http://misseffiesdiary.blogspot.com/

    I wish I could find more SINGLE women doing this!

    ReplyDelete

Hi, sorry to make the humans do an extra step.