I don't suffer fools well. Especially when the fool is me. So...I'll tell you a little story that I shouldn't have had to tell you.
Last summer I took three downspouts off the west side of the house to get to the layers of shingles underneath. (Well, actually, I took off two of them—the other one fell off when my mom was prying on a particularly stubborn row of shingles and nearly hit her in the head.) The downspouts laid there in the side yard last fall while I painted the front third of the west side of the house. The downspouts laid there in the side yard even after I finished painting that part of the house. They laid there all winter through the ice and snow. They laid there all spring through the rains. They laid there—well, you can see where this is going, can't you? Yep, they laid there until yesterday, when I put them back up.
But before I could put them back up, there was the little problem of fixing the water damage to the new paint job that a year without downspouts had caused. Without downspouts, rain or sleet or melted snow runs down the side of the house, where it seeps into the tiniest crack in the paint and causes it to bubble up and peel off. You probably knew this. I should have known it.
Now, I know it. After spending about four hours scraping off peeling paint that I'd just put on six months ago, then repainting a narrow swath of the house where the downspouts should have been, then finally hanging up the downspouts and painting them, now I know it. Some lessons I just have to learn the hard way.