Wool and Spice

Ow, ow, ow.

I hurt in places I didn’t know I had.

Yesterday was the day of service project that I’ve been working on for several months.  I overslept and didn’t get up until 5:30 and from then it was non-stop on my feet until 9 pm. That’s tough duty for somebody who’s been sitting on her arse for 10-hour work days for the last 6 weeks. It was a very long day.

I woke up at 4 am this morning in so much pain from the waist down I couldn’t sleep. Two Advil didn’t touch it and I finally got up at 5 am so I could move and stretch which helped and I took a nap this afternoon so I don’t feel quite so wiped out.

Our recruiting efforts netted nearly 50 volunteers that we split into two crews to rehab an elderly couple’s home and transitional housing run by a local charity. We ran into our share of problems but managed to accomplish a lot.  Not everything got finished, so we’ll send a couple skilled people back this week to put the finishing touches on it.

Here’s what we did in about 10 hours just at the elderly couple’s home:

• Scraped and painted the ceiling and walls in the living room and kitchen, two coats and on some walls, three coats.
• Tore out the bathroom floor and toilet, repaired it, laid a new floor, new vinyl tile and installed a new higher toilet to accommodate their disabilities. This one job took one and a half guys nearly 12 hours by itself. It was horrendous when we started and terrific when we finished.
• Tore out the kitchen carpet, repaired the floor and prepared it for vinyl tile that will go down this week.
• Installed new electrical and water lines for a washer and dryer and moved them to the main floor from the basement.
• Cut down an overgrown tree that was causing drainage problems and hauled that away.
• Repaired rotted window sills and door thresholds.
• Dug two drainage ditches and installed tile to redirect runoff away from the house.
• Caulked huge cracks in the basement foundation walls.
• Installed new light fixtures including one that was determined to be a safety hazard.
• Hauled out her stove and installed a new one. This was a total surprise. As part of the rebuilding project Sears provided free service calls to the homes with appliance problems. When Sears determined they couldn’t get the part they needed to fix the homeowner’s stove they delivered a brand new stove. Major kudos to their organization. It was a generous gesture and I was totally impressed with the way they handled it.
• Cleaned and parged two other basement walls (masonry work).
• Washed windows.
• Built new basement steps (this was actually done before we got there) so they can get into the basement/garage without having to walk outside.
• Made numerous trips to the home improvement stores for more supplies and materials.
• Raked the yard, cleaned up flower beds, sowed grass seed.
• Cut up the old basement steps, hauled all the trash away, composted all the leaves and weeds and tidied up the outside of the house.

At the end of the day, we walked away knowing that there was a lot more that could be done, but the home was so much better than when we started and our single day of work will allow them to “age in place”, a term I heard this morning and don’t like. It sounds like what you do to cheese.

I don’t know much about what went on at the second project site because our volunteers there joined another team who didn’t have enough volunteers for the job. However I’ve heard reports that one of our volunteers was harassed by someone from the other team. I’m still finding out what went down so I’ll leave it unsaid for now but I’m not pleased on a lot of levels. Bullies used to scare me but not anymore and I don’t tolerate morons, particularly self-righteous conservative religious wingnuts who haven’t used their brain cells for more than taking up the space between their ears since they left high school. There. And I said I wouldn’t say anything. I’ll get to the bottom of it and there will be discussions with the other team captain and our rebuilding partner.

There’s still administrative stuff to do, thank you letters to write and reports to fill out. Our volunteers said they’d like to do it again next year, so we’ll see.  I failed to recruit enough skilled tradespeople but now I’ve got better contacts so if there’s a next time the job would be easier. It was a tremendous amount of work not just for me but for my committee and we’ll have to decide if it’s a direction we want to continue to pursue.

For now, I’m just glad there’s at least one part of my body that doesn’t hurt.  And I’m looking forward to sitting on my arse again tomorrow.