SAFETY FIRST!

My husband left this morning for work leaving 3 open ladders in our kitchen we are remodeling. Why on earth we need 3 ladders is beyond me. I took 2 of them out to the porch and kept the shiniest, newest looking one to use. I assumed that since it didn't look like it was built out of wood in the Mesozoic Era or bent aluminum that it would be the safest. I was wrong. I climbed up the rungs and the top suddenly bent over at the hinges smashing my fingers in the sides. I couldn't get down, because my fingers were stuck way up at the top. So I stood there saying "Oh shit, one of you girls are going to have to call one of your uncles because I'm stuck." I stood there realizing that two thirds of the ladder was covered in DANGER blah blah blah and SAFETY FIRST with a picture of a little man in the exact same predicament that I was in with a Big Red X over it. Meanwhile my fingers were tingling with numbness. I could just hear my husbands voice in my head, "Bess, you're going to hurt yourself." He tells me this all the time. This is why I stay married to him. He knows how to work ladders and he loves to state the obvious. And we make cute babies. And he washed the dishes twice.

A couple of years ago my Grandma was babysitting #1. She was using a big stapler and she stapled herself to the stapler. She called 9-1-1. My other family members heard the emergency squad going to her house and immediately followed, worried there was something wrong with my child. No, it was just Grandma, stapled to the stapler. #1 just went about her business, coloring or something.

So I'm typing this tonight, with two purple fingers, the rest unscathed if not a little sore - that I managed to wriggle out with the support of #1 & 2, coaxing me along. I then read the directions and learned how to "lock" the ladder in position. Come on, who reads directions to a ladder?