It was Titus...

...that had the idea first. He took his sandals off and used his bare feet.

So today I'm trying to "winterize" the house. I haven't gotten very far, but I did manage the clean the chimney. Normally this would just be a nuisance, but we had our roof replaced earlier this year with tin. Ok, "metal." I wasn't too concerned as I've been on metal roofs a lot in my life, but when I started up the incline to where the chimney was I just spun my "wheels." I think i'm going to use quotes a few more times. Now then, I was in a bit of a conundrum. I looked at the surface and I noticed that it wasn't normal metal roofing. At least, not the kind I was used to. It had (has?) some kind of coating and I could not get any purchase. Finally I got a running start and scrabbled (yes that's a word) up. As I neared the top I was running out of energy and time. Finally, just like you see in the movies, with my last bit strength I lunged towards the peak of the roof and grabbed  the edge. With my fingertips I was able to get a grip (literally) and hang on. I then drug myself up to the peak and hung over the edge a little. I was exhausted. I'm sure it probably would have been amusing to an onlooker, but I was desperate because I knew I wasn't going to have the energy again anytime soon to try that again. Thankfully, once I got up there Forrest was able to hand me the chimney sweep. Then he tried to climb up and he couldn't. So I held one end of the chimney sweep down so he could use that to pull himself up. Finally he got up and then we were tripping over each other trying to not slide down. I was able to brace myself against the chimney and forrest just held onto the peak of the roof. So then I proceeded to clean the chimney which involves breathing in a lot of soot. Before I was done, Titus climbed up. When he got to where the steeper roof incline started he ran into the same issue that Forrest and I had. But Titus, that wasn't going to stop him. So he took off his sandals and climbed up like a little monkey. Well, that's cool I thought, but I didn't think much of it. But then when it was time to climb down, Forrest said he was scared so I told him to take his shoes off and do what Titus did. But when I went to climb down I understood Forrest's fear. If I started sliding down, I wasn't going to stop. So, before we were done we all three were climbing down barefoot.

So, now you know what to do if you can't climb up a roof without sliding down.