My love of thunder bites me in the ass

Picture this:
The rain is coming down hard. I realize that one of my roofline gutters is plugged up. Instead of the water coming out the proper drain spout and being led away from the house, it is overflowing the roofline gutter, falling down right next to the house, and puddling up against the cement foundation. When the house is almost 90 years old, thats a problem. First, I pulled my trashcan under the waterfall coming off the roof and then I saw my neighbor pull in. She had a step ladder. Thank god, I thought, I could pull the plug out from the gutter. But it was too short. I stood on the "this is not a step" part of the ladder and it was still too short. So I pulled a bunch of flagstones from my backyard around to the side. Stacked them, first three and then five stones tall, climbed back onto the ladder (now balanced on the paving stones) and again onto the "this is not a step" top most rung and ever so slowly - cause I could barely reach - started pulling branches and pinecones out of the gutter. (Pride salvaging attempt - I did this properly earlier this summer - borrowed a real ladder - got on top of the roof on a sunny day and cleaned both my gutters.) After a few minutes of pulling small handfulls of branches, twigs, and dirt out of the gutter it started to flow properly.

While grabbing the flagstones I had one of those non-flashback moments, when you imagine a hypothetical scene. I could just see my cousin Lauren and me sitting around and hearing a news story about some kid who fell and died when the ladder that was balanced on stones tilted over or the "this is not a step" part broke. What an idiot he must have been, we thought. Maybe not, maybe he was saving his house.