Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

<whimper> The top end of the ladder is a couple feet below the sill of the third-floor window. The bottom end of the ladder is dangling a few feet above the steps to the basement door. The rope holding it up is tied off to the piano (I guess it's a good thing I haven't gotten the piano moved downstairs yet after all). My arms are trembling. Muscles in my palms are trembling (I'm using the backspace key a whole lot here). I have to stop. I did not lean out the window far enough to risk being defenestrated, but I did lean out far enough to be using muscles in the wrong part of my back for the amount of weight I was trying to draw straight up to me.

I got far enough to grab rungs and more or less "climb down the ladder" while wedged in place, to lift it past me a rung at a time. When the top end hit the rain gutter above me, I was running out of strength to do anything fancy. I tried tipping it over on its side onto the second-floor roof, but lacked the leverage to do that gradually while inching it up, and the length still below that roofline was longer than the gap between the houses so I couldn't flop it over and then slide it sideways to get the center of mass onto the roof.

Looking at the radar loop it looks like I've still got a bit of time. But I think my clever plan to be able to tackle this solo is turning out to be not so clever after all. The angles are wrong.

And I still need to find the strength to hike back out to the pharmacy before 17:00, if yesterday's computer glitch has been fixed. I just melted a lot of my spoons trying to lift that ladder straight up. :-(

If there were an attachment point I trusted to be strong enough on the lip of the third-floor roof, where I could mount a pulley (or even just an eye, maybe), that might be enough of a change to the geometry to make this work. Or possibly if I could anchor myself securely to the second-floor roof with my head and arms over the edge, I could -- after resting up! -- get the ladder up rung by rung and tip it back over my body, but that's questionable. (And without a ratchet arrangement to keep it from falling back down, I would not be able to pause in the middle when my arms got tired. Leaning out the window, I stepped on the rope to keep it from sliding back out when I had to let go with my hands. Not that that helped after the rung the rope was tied to was higher than the windowsill.)

On the plus side, I think I finally managed to sever the vines that keep growing into the computer room through the gap between the sashes of the window there. And I won't forget to ice my wrist today. (Ow. Hand-over-hand rope work not good.)

Ugh. Need to get prescriptions. Want to just fall over until muscles stop trembling.

Oh look, sunshine. Where'd that come from?