Caught Between Two Opposing Sides

This is the story of a battle between the side of me which really likes being able to see out of my windows and the side of me which would really prefer to have her feet on the ground.

So I like light and brightness. Growing up in Saskatchewan, we got a lot of sunlight every day. I find Ontario very grey so I'm always turning on lights or keeping curtains open, etc. The ivy growing on our house, which you can see in this post, is kind of a wildcard and doesn't really have a lot of respect for "This is a window so I shouldn't grow over it." I also felt really closed in by not being able to see outside. As you can see from the pictures above, our window, and the window in Sam's room, were mostly ivy-covered. However, these windows are second story windows. Enter: a ladder. (Ladders, by the way, are a major, somewhat necessary, non-exciting, new homeowner purchase. Boo.) And then enter the debate of "Who is more comfortable with heights and wants to climb up to our second story and pull ivy off of the windows?" Let's just say I won (or lost, depending on your point of view) that one.

In the picture on the left, you can barely make out our bedroom window underneath all the crazy ivy. In the picture on the right we won't talk about how high up I am. I used to be a bigger fan of heights than I am now. Let's just say that Dave is almost 6 feet tall and leave it at that. Also, when we were looking at these pictures a few nights ago, my mom pointed out that it looked like I have no legs. Let me reassure you by saying, yes I still have my legs :)

This is the picture where both Dave and I are acknowledging "Holy Cow! She's/I'm really far up in the air." Yerghks.

My dad took a picture of me trimming the ivy around the dining room window, which is on our first story. I think I look like my mom in this picture. Or I'm just doing a worse job than she does of sporting her hairstyle!

While we were trimming the ivy, Mom and Dad made all the peppers in our fridge into a soup. They broiled them, took the skins off, added some other stuff, pureed it and Voila! Delicious soup. This is a picture of the soup before it was pureed. I thought it looked really pretty.

There are no pictures of the scariness which was climbing up the ladder, which was precariously (at least it felt that way to me) leaning against the house, to try and trim the ivy around Sam's window. I asked Dave about every thirty seconds "Are you still holding the ladder?" which was probably annoying but I needed reassurance. After I climbed down I announced, "Next time we are hiring someone to trim that window."

See, Sam's window (the one on the top) is very far away from the ground. Even further away from the ground when you are up on a ladder trying to reach it. And I'm pretty sure that's a scientific fact.

And here are our bedroom window and Sam's bedroom window, post-ivy trim. It was hard to get a good picture because there was so much light coming in to the rooms. Dad noticed that every room in the house looked brighter. Yay! I'm so glad there were immediate results to me braving out being on the ladder.

But like I said, next year I think we might hire someone to do this. Or find a really brave, non-scared of heights friend. Any volunteers???

And for those of you who might have noticed, yes, my blog post title from yesterday changed no less than three times before I found one I was happy with. Sometimes a good title presents itself right away and sometimes it takes a little more wrestling. Yesterday was a wrestling day :)