When you get toward the crests of the two rises, you can't see over the top, so while driving along with three of my children in the car, I couldn't be absolutely sure that there was road on the other side. Compounding the issue was an apparent blood-sugar crash. Biscuit said it was fun watching me freak out and say the alphabet in every language I know (except sign language because nothing could pry my hands from that steering wheel-- absolutely nothing). 
It looks pretty innocent, doesn't it? Here's what it looks like from the inside:
That is, unless you're me and suddenly struck by the fact that my kids and I are, like ten miles above the surface of the water and if the big one hits right now, we're all plunging to our icy doom in the depths below. All I can see in my crazy little head is this:
Anyway, we got what we needed from Greenbrae and headed home (back across the dreaded bridge again, of course) arriving all together and with all the parts we had when we'd left. It was unfortunately with that experience fresh in my mind, however, that I noticed the other day the branches of one of the trees in the back yard heavy with fruit. Pretty, deep red, round, juicy fruit with tongue-tieable green stems. I picked all I could with my feet planted firmly on the ground-- about twenty cherries. Not too impressive. Knowing that my dad's penchant for cherries and my awesome next-door neighbor's request for cherries would both go unsatisfied with only twenty of the little tresures, I reluctantly admitted to myself that it was time to get out the ladder.
Hubby and I walked around the side of the house to retrieve the subject item. We carried it over to the patio beneath the tree and set it up. Oh. My. God. At that moment we made a great discovery. We learned that our house is not only home to the laziest toilet in the universe, it also boasts the oldest, Ricketiest Ladder on Earth. It belongs in a museum next to Bronze Age artifacts. The Church could feasibly label it a relic. I'd bet even people in Tijuana would think it was old and scary. Needless to say, I was not getting on that ladder. Nope. So what happened? Are the cherries still on the tree, weighing down the branches with their now decaying flesh, nothing more than snacks for the birds? Of course not!
Hubby trained as a fireman. Did you know that? I did, but it's one of those things about him I keep forgetting along with the fact that other people occasionally find him funny, handsome and charming. He tells a story about how he once climbed a forty-foot ladder that was sticking straight up in the air, hooked his legs from the rungs and dangled from it WITHOUT USING HIS HANDS. The very thought of this makes me want to lay down flat on the floor and weave my fingers through the carpet and clench a big mouthful of it between my teeth. Which was pretty much what I wanted to do while I watched him climb the Ricketiest Ladder on Earth and wobblewobblewobble on it while picking the cherries from the upper branches of the tree, dropping them (and not a few leaves and sticks0 into my waiting bowl below.
He got a big bowlful before the spiders started their earthbound descent and I (the Party-Pooper) declared that whole game officially over. He climbed off and we folded the Ricketiest Ladder on Earth and carried it (I got the uninfested end) back to its hooks on the other side of the house, where it will stay and I can pretend it never existed. Because even though it's marvelous to eat cherries that came from our own (rented) tree I've decided it isn't worth watching my husband plummet to his doom to get them. I'll just drive to the store and buy some.
Unless I have to drive across a bridge to get there.
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