Well, my day isn't going to get any more exciting and it's only 1pm. crying
We're having extreme winds over here and my family is all huddled in the house where it's warm and wind free. My sister looked out to the deck and sees one of our awning poles has broken lose. This is a bad thing because if the wind was able to tear off one, it could get the other one and bye bye awning AND eavestrough.
So Mommy and I go out and brave the elements and catch the pole and proceed to pin it back down. Turns out it was a rusted screw rusted away the end of the pole and we just had to loosen the screw and put the pole back in and tighten the screw again. We then look warily up at the awning that's trying to fly away and is just barely hanging on.
Mommy spoke what we were all thinking. "It has to come down."
I lower my head in defeat as the awning is my yearly chore and I'm the one who has to get up on the ladder/footstool to bring it down in these huge wind gusts. Great.
So Mommy runs off for the footstool and twist-ties to secure the lights (we have mini lights around our awning poles and half of them were held up by the awning straps), while I survey the smartest way to do this without re-enacting Danny Deckchair (Australian movie with Miranda Otto. Some guy ties balloons to a deck chair and takes off in it just to see if it would work). So Mommy returns and my father comes out to I dunno, supervise I guess... rolleyes (Sorry Fala xd )... and I started right away in hopes of not dying. So I ran around and slowly released one strap at a time, this thing is flapping wildly and I'm on a freaking footstool with wind gusts easily strong enough to knock me off.
I eventually managed to get a way for the air to escape rather than hit at the awning so that releasing the rest of the straps was less dangerous and scary. Then we hit a snag. I'm too damn short to reach the middle even on the footstool. So Mommy calls in the cavalry (Lisa xd ) and she stands by and keeps and eye on my insane attempts to release the things anyway while Mommy runs for the ladder (Remember, my sister is at least three inches taller than me and could have released the straps from the footstool).
Once the ladder was in place I was able to unstrap the highest straps and work my way down to the lower ones. See, I'm not as dumb as I look. That way the wind couldn't do anything while I was loosening the high ones, had I done them after it would have been pulling on them. Mwahaha, too smart for you wind! Then we needed extra help. Lisa was pinning up the lights, Mommy was being overprotective and panicking at my knees and we needed some one to hold the awning down so it didn't fly away after we released the last of the straps.
Dad... gonk
So then I hand it down to where Mommy can reach it and she hands it over to him with strict instructions. "Stand there. Hold it. Don't PULL!" How complicated is that guys? Even with the wind blowing, the awning was crumpled and couldn't catch there and it was attached every where else. So why he was continuously pulling is beyond me. Then he thought he should lead the show when clearly it was the Kamikaze Strap Releaser's show. Anyway, I was able to function and not die while he did his stupid non listening thing and Mommy was able to loosen lower straps and between her and I and a shout of "NOW pull!" we had the awning down and in a bundle on a deck chair. Sure Lisa and I felt the need to go adventuring but we remembered Danny Deckchair almost falling off his chair at the level of a skyscraper's 50th floor and thinking we didn't want to follow in his footsteps. So instead we tied up the rest of the lights and then Mommy took the ladder back while I took the footstool and ran inside with Lisa so we could thaw our poor bare feet.
So that was the highlight of my day. Now I have no idea what I'm going to do because it'll take a lot to top that... xd
Glorfirith Annun · Sun Nov 06, 2005 @ 06:39pm · 5 Comments |