cari on a cold wet roof

I haven't yet worked up the courage to go into the crawl space and retrieve my christmas decorations. It's dark down there, and there are spiders. I remember after my husband put them away last year he came back up with cobwebs all over his back and in his hair. It wasn't pretty, and I'm not sure I'm ready to go there yet.
So I decided instead to tackle the christmas lights. I come from an anxiety ridden family, so I was given clear instructions that if I was going to go on the roof I needed to call someone to let them know. That way if I fell off someone would know to come looking. I've been working so much that the fear was if I fell of the roof and no one heard from me in two days they would all just say "she must be working".
I called Liz at 8:30 this morning to tell her I was going up, she said she would come by in an hour if she hadn't heard from me. I grabbed the ladder and out I went. Going up a ladder is not a big deal for me, going down is another story. When I was young I had to be rescued more than once from Jenn's treehouse because I would find myself suddenly paralyzed with fear at the thought of going down the ladder. And in Costa rica I had no trouble zipping through the rain forest on a cable, but that 5 foot ladder between platform had me shaking with fear.
So up I went, spied on the neighbours a bit, and set to work. No problem.
Then it was time to go down, I stood there staring at the ladder, somewhat freaked out. Please note that I live in a rancher and I was maybe 8ft off the ground. Pretty stupid. I sucked it up and down I went. But I can't help but wonder, did I have a ladder incident when I was young that I'm not remembering.??
Next challenge.....the crawl space. Then again...do we really need a christmas tree this year??