THINGS ARE LOOKING UP - EDITED
A while back, my wife Joan and I were working on painting the stairwell and upstairs hallway at our lake condo. It was mostly going to be straight-forward wall painting with fixing some "nail-pops" and drywall scuffs. However, the ceiling was another story. We'd had some leaks prior to re-roofing, and one was serious enough to leach through and make a hole in the ceiling drywall above the stairwell. It would take some patching and texturing before we painted. We decided to tackle the ceiling leak problem and paint it before we painted the walls for obvious reasons.
The ceiling above the stairwell is pretty high until you get closer to the top of the steps. I didn't have a "Little Giant" or other special extension ladder that are meant to use on stairs, so we needed to do some "jury-rigging" of our old regular wooden step ladder to make it fit on steps with the legs at different heights. This involved drilling holes and screwing some 2x4 extensions on the two front legs of the ladder to make it stand level on the stairs. This did not give us the most stable ladder in the world. We decided it would be best if Joan went up the ladder since she is a lot lighter than me, and that I would hold the ladder to keep it steady.
She went up the ladder to try it out while I held it. Then she wiggled around as she would when scraping and spackling. Even with my support, it wasn't as stable as we'd like for her safety's sake. We quickly concluded that we needed get some more help holding the ladder while she painted. It was a Saturday, so we'd likely have neighbors there for the weekend. We have two or three neighbors who have become friends and we often help each other on projects like this. Luckily, our next-door neighbors were home, and I asked Brian if he could help. He said he'd be happy to assist, and we made plans to tackle the job in a half hour so. This gave me time to stage all the tools and supplies and for Joan and me to change into cooler work clothes as the day was getting warmer.
Joan went to change first and came back wearing old paint-stained cut-off work shorts and a tee-shirt that she had also cut off to make shorter and cooler. The shorts weren't "Daisy Dukes" short, but they'd be short enough, and the legs flared wide enough to likely get a glimpse of her panties when on the ladder. While her top wasn't quite a full-fledged crop-top, it certainly showed some significant midriff. Also, I noticed that as typical on weekends, she wasn't wearing a bra. Being petite on top, 36A, she can get away with going braless most places most of the time, cold weather and arousing situations notwithstanding. She was well aware that our neighbor was coming to help, so I figured the "no bra" and her choice of shirt and shorts had to be intentional and certainly acceptable, if not arousing to her, and colossally enticing to Brian and me.
We both had heard credible rumors that our neighbor and his wife spent a fair amount of time sunning in the nude on their boat, including with any number of their friends from back home. They had invited us to join them several times but knowing their on-deck dress code we hadn't yet decided our willingness to participate. I wasn't sure if there was any connection between this and Joan's choice of attire today, though it seemed suspicious.
When Brian came over, we explained what we were doing, and that we needed help holding the ladder steady while Joan scraped loose paint and drywall and applied the first coat of spackle. This was at most a half-hour effort today, and something similar on Sunday if he was again available.
