I woke up super early yesterday and decided to whip up a batch of biscuits. I made my coffee and took two piping hot biscuits with butter and homemade jams and headed for the pool deck to watch the morning sun come over the hill. I brought you along on a FB Live if you want to catch it. You can see the morning fog in the trees. It was delightful, even though the dew was dripping on me from the pergola.

Mr. FixIt was still snoozing so I went downstairs and started sewing on the quilt. Things were going great for a couple of hours but then I started feeling really hot and within moments I was sick. I seem to have become sensitive to my morning coffee which is a real bummer as I am a coffee hound. I have been burning the candle at both ends this week and haven’t slept well so went back to bed and slept till 2:00 in the afternoon. When I got up, I felt much better.

I took some 7UP and soda crackers, just in case, and went back down to the sewing nook and got several blocks put together. I had to stop and rip some seams out of the first three because I didn’t put them together quite right. I ended up hanging the first block on the fabric board behind my sewing machine as a guide. Once I did that, I didn’t have a problem putting them together correctly.

Around 4:30, Mr. FixIt came down and asked if I could help with a project. A couple of years ago, we finished remodeling the bathroom off the master bedroom. This summer, it has sprung a leak around the exhaust pipe. It did that once before and Mr. FixIt got up there and nailed the rubber gasket down around it and that fixed the small leak. But this week, it started leaking with a vengeance. 

The Offending Leak

Now, you know my sweetheart had a couple of small strokes in 2020 and his balance is forever changed by that. He does great, he works hard and he can do just about anything, but climbing up a ladder and going up on a roof is NOT happening. We have boys, but they were working yesterday and it’s supposed to rain all weekend. So…I’m the next best thing. Mr. FixIt said I may not want to do it and if I didn’t, we’d work something out. I told him I’d have a look.

Stupid Human Tricks

The first thing I did was say a prayer. A BIG prayer. Then I crossed myself for good measure…in case Mr. Virgo was watching. I know God was…and all my legion of guardian angels it takes to keep my adventurous butt safe.

The first time I climbed up the ladder, I asked if we could change the angle so the ascent would be less steep. I came down and we repositioned the ladder. The second time I climbed up, I didn’t like that there wasn’t enough ladder at the top so that I’d feel more comfortable stepping onto the roof. I came back down and we extended the ladder another rung. This time I went up and, after just a few moments of hesitation and evaluating where to put my foot, etc., I stepped confidently on the roof and made my way to the offending pipe.

I had a rope tied around my waist and pulled up the battery powered caulking gun. Mr. FixIt tossed up the hammer and a bag of roofing nails. I proceeded to nail down the rubber flashing and caulked the heck out of that thing. I had rubber gloves on and I smeared the black goo into all the seams of the shingles as well as the top of the rubber gasket where it looked dry and aging. If that thing leaks now, I’d be really surprised. 

I lowered the caulking gun back down over the edge and tossed the hammer after making sure Mr. FixIt and the cat were nowhere near. Mr. FixIt held on to the ladder with a death grip and, using the top of the extension, I easily held on and stepped around with my sturdy work boots. I was back down in record time. It was still pretty hot up there and the ball of my hand is red from using it to lift myself up and down. I only got a little of the black goo on me so now we’ll wait and see how it does in the rain.

The offending pipe…caulked within an inch of its life!

Mr. FixIt beamed when I came down the ladder. I know he is so proud of me when I do things like this. He thanks me profusely and tells me I do a good job. That means a lot to me. Losing Mr. Virgo so suddenly has taught me I need to know how to do things around here…anywhere, really. I’m happy to help and to push my boundaries to see what I am still capable of. I didn’t feel unsafe and the pitch of that roof is so low, it’s nearly flat. I would NEVER get up on a steep pitched roof. And hopefully, I won’t have to get back up on this one. But I know I can…at least for the time being.

I remember when my grandma broke her first hip. The doctor asked my aunt if she had ANY idea what her mother was doing at the time. My aunt allowed she did not. Turns out, grandma had tied a rope around her waist and tied the other end to a tree. She was going to have my uncle cut down the tree and she wanted to “make sure that tree didn’t go down into the creek and block it up.” Well, as luck would have it, the rope broke before the tree was felled and she hit the ground, breaking her hip. It’s a darned good thing because that tree would have whipped her down with it! So, see? I get this craziness honest!

Once I got down from the roof, I went right back down to the sewing machine and worked for another couple of hours. Like I told you the other day…Step Four on this quilt is going to be the most complicated and time consuming of them all so I just have to plug along and be happy with progress.

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“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

1 Corinthians 15:58 ESV