Gutters
The gutters of my house occasionally need cleaning. Fortunately, it is a one-story house. Fortunately, there are only trees on one side that drop leaves and tassels into the gutters. Unfortunately, I am the chosen one to climb and clean. Unfortunately, the ladder I use, although aluminum, is heavy and more than once it has pinched my fingers with its sliding sections.
On Wednesday, with rain forecast, I cleaned the gutters. It was a wet sloppy mess. Ordinarily, I blow leaves out with the battery-operated blower. But recent rains had left them wet. Wet leaves and oak tassels are more tenacious than the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, they cling together with hard resolve. I had to go around them and dig them out by hand. You could almost hear them crying, “We want to decay together in peace bathed in warm Texas rainwater.”
They were denied. I prevailed. Me and Xerxes. Him with a million-man army, me with will and good gloves. Unlike Xerxes, however, I will have to do battle with my leaves as long at the rain falls, the oak trees grow, and I own the house that stands beneath them. Makes me feel like Sisyphus, and hardly a king with an empire. But this is the lot I chose, although perhaps Zeus is still around, and with no kings to badger, he decided to badger me.