Possibly you didn’t realize the gutter was broken, but now as you stand in the wind and rain you realize you need to get your winter gear on before you even attempt to fix it. If you leave it the way it is, water may drain directly into your foundation, and that won’t be good.

However before you change your clothing or get the ladder and tools out, consider what the damage would be if you fought to fix it during a storm. Number one, you could fall off of the ladder and break your leg, or possibly your back. Number two, you could do more damage if you messed the gutter up more. Number three, you’d be miserably wet, and you could catch a death of a cold.

Is there something else you could do to get the water away from the foundation? Other than climbing up the ladder that is while the rain runs down your neck and you should have changed from your sneakers into your boots because your feet are now soaked.

You could find a shovel and try to dig a drainage ditch away from the foundation. That could work because the ground is soaked and it would be easy to manipulate the water to drain away from the house.

Or you could just stand there trying to figure out if the ladder is tall enough, and how would you anchor it against the house? You couldn’t use the drain as a support because there was no drain. And even if there was one, you’d have to move the ladder away from the house.

So consider your best line of defense. If you’re not going to climb that ladder, and if you’re not going to even try to install another piece of gutter, then you might as well go on into your house, sit by the fire and enjoy the afternoon. Because nothing is going to get done in this storm, admit it.

When your spouse asks if you got it fixed, tell her that you’ve done all that was possible, and when the storm passes you’ll fix it correctly while promising yourself that you’ll call the repairman.

In the meantime, just pray that the water won’t run into your basement. You know it won’t rain for 40 days straight and the ditch that you dug to keep the water away from the house just has to work. It just has to.