I have mixed feelings today. I'm getting used to the routine. I'm finally phase shifted so that I get to sleep at about 10 in the evening and up at 6 something and then we're out to breakfast and off to work.
( Cut for length and possibility of hitting friends's lists. )

So the stories of today aren't just about the details of working on Art Coleman's house. Art is the electrician whose house we're working on, and we heard that he not only had already fulfilled his barter time with HOPE Force, but he was on contract with them and a really great guy to work with. He would answer anyone's call at nearly any time of the day or night, so was a really good guy for them to work with.

But Kristen asked him, today, what his flood story was like, as she really wanted to know the stories of the people whose houses we were working on.

The lady, whose house we worked on the first day, had a story of her chow dog. The dog survived the flood by swimming the storm surge and since the house was damaged so badly, when the storm surge went away, the dog was actually able to get into the house. So when she came back to the house days later, the dog was inside it, guarding it from everyone. The dog is still there and still guarding the house from everyone, even though everyone that now comes is a volunteer that is about to work on the house, rather than someone actually trying to damage or steal from it. Still, she guards the house as if her owners depend on it.

Art's story was even more grueling.

He'd just had abdominal surgery on a hernia two days before Katrina. And his daughter had given birth to a baby girl on the 5th and Katrina was on the 29th. When the storm came his wife made him and his family move to her mother's house, which was on Main Street, further up from the shore and beach. They thought they were safe. It rained and rained and then suddenly the water started coming up the street, and after it the water rose and rose and rose. It was the slow, really high storm surge of Katrina. The water came from both the North and the South, from the Gulf and the Back Bay, and it rushed through town to the west.

Art said that it was a miracle that the debris in the water parted around the houses, that there were enough prayers in all the houses to make it all part. But the water kept going up and up. And his mother-in-law and his wife and daughters were on inflated air mattresses, in the house. He ended up standing on a chest of drawers, hanging onto a door to stay up and holding his newborn grand-daughter above the water. He'd found a floating plastic tub, and put her in it, and she slept through the storm. They didn't know how far up the water was going to go, and the ladies in the air mattresses could touch the ceiling at the height of the storm surge.

They stayed there, not knowing if the water was going to drown them in their own house for an hour. Then the water started going down. They were definitely safer in the house rather than out in the storm and debris and it worked out. He ripped out most of the stitches inside him in the endeavor, but they survived it. A month or two later, he went back to the hospital to have the work redone. The next two or three days happened and then water and food were air-dropped into Biloxi. So they did okay, as they were able to get part of that air drop.

His wife wanted to see what had happened to their home, so they tried walking in, but the debris was so bad, and even miles inland from their neighborhood, they could see that nothing was left standing. So they knew that since they were even closer to the ocean, they had no chance of anything being left. When they finally were able to get to the site, weeks later, there was nothing left but a water tank and, perhaps, a few bricks.

They'd been insured, and since it was obvious it was flood damage that destroyed their house, there were none of the disputes that arose in other houses that were destroyed by the storm in other ways. They got the money, but it ran out before they could finish the interior of the house. So that's why we're doing all we can to finish all the trim in the house. It's intensive, hard work, with lots of attention to detail. My legs and knees hurt, but it's only pain, and after hearing that story, there's no way we won't get it done. I think that hearing it has given me the motivation to really work through the end of the week, when I'm aching and tired and ready to be done. When I have a goal, I can work through nearly anything.

Another house that folks are working on is a rebuild of an older house that was eaten from the inside out by termites. They had tried to do something to shore it up, but it was so weak it made it nearly fall apart, so they had to carefully replace all the underlying wooden structure, piece by piece so as not to destroy the rest of the house. So it's not square and it tilts in interesting directions, and they're having a really hard time getting all the sheet rock on; but they're managing as well.

All in all our crew is working on five different houses. We're probably going to get to see a few of the other ones tomorrow, and that would be good to see and know. There's one house that's on twelve foot stilts. I'll probably talk more about those tomorrow.

We got some good progress done. Nearly all the doors are painted. We managed to do all the trim work on three different rooms and a few closets, and most of the other rooms are nearly all prepped and ready to go with the paint and caulk and they should be done. The prep work is the hardest. First getting all the boards in, then doing the putty work and getting all the edges finished, then getting the quarter round down, then sanding, wiping down, caulking the quarter round and any big gaps, and then getting tape down on the wall and floor, and after that, finishing it all with caulk and paint and while the caulk is still wet, getting all the tape up gently so as to not bring the caulk up with it. All of that has to be done around every floor, every window, and every door. It's an amazing amount of work for something that is all done just so that one cannot see how the trim was put on the wall. That still amazes me. Gabe was putting in nearly all the wood. I was doing nearly all the putty and caulking. John and Kristen were doing a lot of the sanding and wiping and taping.

Teresa and Vicki were doing nothing but painting the doors, because the doors were actually quite hard to do, as they were shaped in a way that made it really hard to get the paint to stay even on them. And they had to do one side and then let it dry before being able to do the other side or the edges. So a lot of time has been spent just moving the doors around so that they can dry enough to get to the other side or to another door. It's been a very interesting problem of logistics. But they're now nearly done with all of them, so Teresa is very motivated to help with the trim to get those doors hung so that they can be "finished" with the rest of the trim. So that will be another pair of hands for the morning.

We did that all day, starting at 7:30, as that was when we got there from breakfast, and got off at around 5. My ankles were pretty swollen from spending all day on my feet for the last four days.

After getting cleaned up and putting my towel into the Laundry for the Night pile, we all headed out to the Shed. It was a place that John's brother Walt recommended, and it's basically a tin shed with a bunch of tables outsides. All the food is "To Go" but they'll deliver the to go food to a very haphazard arrangement of tables outside the store proper. It's strung with Christmas lights, there's a stage for the live music on Friday and Saturday nights, and there's all kinds of decorations up in all different directions. It's pretty amazing.

And the food is just absolutely wonderful. It's slow smoked BBQ in the Southern sense. Pulled pork, chicken, sausages, spare ribs and baby backs, and brisket, are all the meats. They've got four sides, cole slaw, beans, mac salad, and a stuffed baked potato salad that basically has everything a super-stuffed baked potato might have, bacon, sour cream, and all. It was all very, very good, and was all served in styrofoam boxes with a layer of foil and soft white bread on top.

The meats were all tender, juicy, smoky, and slathered with just enough sauce. The potato salad was creamy, flavored, and textured with all the things in it. The cole slaw was cold and crisp. The pulled pork was super smoky and the sauce just coated the top of the mound of meat, and it was thick and tangy and smoky salt as well. The spare rib had meat that just fell of the bone, and it had been cooked so long that all the collagen was soft and melted in with the meat. It was amazing.

The ambiance was great, too. They were open just a few days after Katrina, even ten miles inland, the water had reached a height of about five feet there. You can see the water line on their windows, where they'd marked it. They hadn't had to do too much to get back into business, they had to wash out the concrete floored place completely. They rounded up the picnic tables from where they'd floated off to, and had to burn out and clean all their BBQ equipment, but then they were pretty much ready to go.

Everyone was there, and there haven't been too many times when all of us were gathered in one place. So John called a little strategic meeting about when and how to get to New Orleans tomorrow. We're 25 people with car spots for 29 and hotel reservations all in one hotel. So it should be fun to get there together and see stuff together. I need to get to sleep so that I can stay up late when we're in the city rather than here when I have work I really want to get to tomorrow.

I will have work to do tomorrow. Hoorah!

The lights went on in the dorm at 6:10 a.m. this morning, and I was not ready to be awake, yet, so I just pulled the covers over my head and slept just a bit more as everyone else got ready for breakfast. I finally got up and got myself together when most of the other folks were out the door. I guess I needed just a little more time alone or something.

Breakfast was sausage, eggs, and a biscuit with the usual juices, cereals on a side bar, and plenty of their percolator coffee. I ate my biscuit and sausage and kind of moved the scrambled eggs around and went for a bowl of cereal. I probably shouldn't have eaten so much, as, on the way to the work site, we stopped at a donut and coffee shop and I couldn't see buying anything there other than a cup of real coffee. I needed that badly after the last three days worth of percolator coffee. I think we're going to make a habit of it.

We just went right to the work site as soon as we got our coffee, and Gabe and his mom and dad showed up. We had Gary look over the crazy bathroom tiling job, and he just said that we should tell the site manager. We got a chance pretty quickly, and he thought it would be okay with a little caulking along the edges. The window gaps were also going to be fixed with caulk, and there was no one that really wanted to learn how to caulk. So I volunteered as there wasn't much more putty to be applied.

I did putty what needed puttying first, but then I had Gabe open a tube of caulk and he showed me what I had to do. Every bit of baseboard needed a bead of caulk applied on top of the quarter inch round at the bottom, and another bead at the top after tape was applied to keep it off the rest of the wall. Each door frame needed three beads of caulk along every crack after the frame was set into the hole for the door. Each window frame needed at least three beads of caulk as well. So I had plenty to do the moment I picked up the caulking gun.

And I spent the day learning like mad. Learning what "a bead of caulk" really looks like. It's not actually a line that lies on top of whatever crack that needed caulking. Usually it's laid on top of a place where two things join and it's supposed to finish the join and be invisible to the eye. It's supposed to cover every crack and make a smooth line over the crack so that paint or something else can be applied on top and make the whole thing look like just one, smooth piece.

I started by just using my finger to fill in and smooth the line. Then I found out that if I held the cut tip at a certain angle, I could actually use the tip instead of my finger tip to smooth the line. If I got it right. If I got the correct amount of caulk to flow at just the right instant for the amount of gap to bridge. If... if... on a completely dynamic problem. I loved it. I love these hand-eye coordination things in order to make something perfect. It's a lot like tai chi, a moving meditation, where one can see nirvana and know that it's nearly impossible to obtain.

Everyone else was complaining, the other day, about having to set screws into the sheet rock at "just the right height" and they all blessed the stops that would only allow them to set a screw so far into the rock. I cursed them because in the corners, the lip would make it so that the power screwdriver couldn't even reach the screws, much less do the right thing with them. I went without the lip because I trusted my hands to stop at exactly the right instant when the screw went into the surface just enough but didn't break the paper too much.

I love those kinds of problems, and everyone else calls them tedious. It's not that inner perfectionist, as I can't get it perfect all the time, and I don't give up or call it quits because I can't get it perfect. It's the courageous part of me that tries and tries and goes fierce and determined and gets focused and wants to learn a hundred miles a minute with every single experience I get.

When I was starting to really get it, Gabe asked me, "Can you imagine doing that for days?"

And I replied, "Yes. I'd get good at it instead of being half-assed about it. I'd learn how to use this damned tip. I'd learn how to get the flow right. If I did this every day, all day, I'd get good at it."

I think it took him aback a little. I don't know. Cursing church members, perhaps, or the fact that I could imagine it and would want to do it in order to really get good at it. He later said that he has spent days doing just the caulking. I believe him, totally. I'm only going to have three days worth, but I'm going to make the most of it. There is so much to do and no one else wants to take the responsibility for doing the caulking, and Gabe and John are too valuable in coordinating everyone else's work or doing the really skilled things that I'm probably going to be caulking girl for a while. But I managed to take a few breaks and putty up all the baseboard and quarter inch boards and door frames that Gabe put up as well.

For lunch we went back to the other house, and the professional, trained taping and mudding crew was in finishing what the sheet rock people had put up. They mudded all the screws and were putting tape over all the seams to allow for a completely smooth finish on the walls. That work is even more exacting and precise than my caulking job, and when they screw up, it's not just a wet towel to fix it. So everyone was glad that they were the ones doing that job.

John ran around like mad and got our laundry into the dryer along with running half a dozen other errands. He got several requests to do other people's laundry as well. That was pretty funny.

We got back to our house, and Teresa and Vicki worked on painting all the doors. Teresa had been working on it all day yesterday and all day today. She needed more help as there were a lot of doors in the house and every single one needed sanding, some needed fixing the paint jobs that had been botched before, and then they needed to be painted on one side and allowed to dry overnight before doing the other side. And a whole new set of doors appeared because the old doors were the wrong size for the holes they were supposed to be fitted into.

Kristen, John, and I finally were able to completely finish a baseboard in one of the bedrooms. I'd spent the morning sanding everything, cleaning it all up with a shop vac, and then wiping down all the surfaces before caulking the quarter inch line and caulking in the gaps between the baseboard and the wall. John and Kristen then went and taped the wall and the floor. That was when I was caulking the other door frames and trying to putty up the quarter inch boards in other parts of the house so that I could sand and wipe and caulk those tomorrow.

When they finished taping, we did an assembly line kind of thing. I caulked the top of each baseboard between the tape and the board. Kristen painted the baseboard from tape to tape. Then John went behind her and pulled up all the tape while the caulking was still wet. This was so that the caulking would not pull up with the tape. This is how professionals finish the baseboards when they want to do a really solid job quickly, a single guy will do five feet at a time in order to keep it all fresh. With three people we just ran all the way around the room in very, very little time. But it was kind of nerve-wracking to do the caulking while someone else was waiting on me, in a way, though Kristen was really patient with me. She was fast, too, and I didn't want to keep her waiting.

But we did it fast, and afterward, both Gabe and John were really pleased by the results, so I did well. Not perfect, as there were a few gaps where the big gap actually dropped the caulk and made holes just a few spots, but I'll be able to touch those up tomorrow. And the whole job was quite pleasing to the professionals, so I feel good about that.

I'll get to learn more of that tomorrow, probably a whole lot more.

I caulked some of the really big gaps that I found, after that, and there's plenty more to do in the house. The bathroom is next, and it's small enough to be quick. The back bedroom is pretty huge, but most of it is ready for what comes next, and with the doors done, the front livingroom will be open for sanding and ready for the whole treatment as well.

At 4:30, we packed up and went back to the dorms. Someone also put all our clean laundry on my bed, so I quickly sorted and folded and got John all his stuff in time for his shower. Then I slid out of my shorts in order to get them in someone's laundry load. I need them for work tomorrow, so I should find them sometime. *laughter* Then I put on another pair of shorts, found an open shower, and cleansed myself of all the sticky, sweaty, and dusty results of my work. Right after my shower someone else was drying towels, so I threw my towel in with theirs so that I could have a dry towel for tomorrow's shower. That was very good timing, all in all, and I was very grateful.

Dinner at the cafeteria was at 5:30, and consisted of cafeteria lasagna, canned green beans, and a light salad bar with cheese and bacon. It was hearty and plenty after a hard day's work. I was so sore I couldn't even keep up with John's walking. My knees really ached, especially the reconstructed right knee, I was squatting half the time I was working near the floor, so I can't really be that surprised; but it just hurt. It's just pain when I'm working. It's something to really slow me down only when I don't have something interesting to do.

From there we headed immediately to Back Bay Mission where nearly all of us met in order to go to a revival meeting in Gulfport. A Baptist church there was having a week's worth of revival meetings, and were kind enough to allow us all to go as well, and we non-blacks, nearly all white, filled half their tiny church and sat there looking kind of appalled on the most part as they sang and clapped and joined in the service with their comments, exclamations, and their singing.

It was odd for me, as so many of the volunteers seemed to take it as some kind of performance for their benefit rather than something they were supposed to participate in. The songs were really repetitious and easy to learn, but no one sang, and it seemed... wrong to not try and be a part of it. So I sang when I could, I clapped when it was easy, and I stood with the rest of the white folks when they all stood or sat as one body. That felt weird too, as the congregation would sit or stand as the Spirit took them, rather than just all as one.

One big man was invited to speak for part of the service. They called him Big Ham or Hammet or Emmet, I'm not quite sure which, but he started his speel with "Thank you God for lettin' me be alive above ground today, as it sure beats getting buried below..." And he had a beautifully funny piece about faith and hope for a community that seems to really need it. It was about how to be thankful for each day, for each meal, and for each breath, that enjoyment and thankfulness for the moment, for the present, is a great gift to God from a good God. I really liked it, but I could also tell that a lot of folks had trouble following it, but I loved the vernacular and his way with the musical speech of his congregation. I loved that.

Then Don, the minister of Back Bay Mission, got all of us stiff outsiders to go up front to the choir stand and sing for the congregation. The songs were the ones he taught us yesterday, and we were pretty tentative when he wasn't singing; but we did okay. He helped our "leaders" and got it really going and ended with the chorus as the closing song for us. It was interesting for me, as I think I finally got that folks really wanted to do it "right" rather than just enjoy the doing of it. And I'm realizing I've changed drastically in not that long a time.

The sermon was about Daniel 6, about the proclamation that if anyone prayed to anyone other than King Nebuchadnezzar, then they'd be thrown in the lions' den. And Daniel went home, opened the windows, and prayed to God three times a day until they came and got him and threw him into the lions' den, above the objections of the King. And he comes out with good wishes for the King's health! I always loved that. And the sermon was pretty straightforward about how a Christian is supposed to meet both two-legged and four-legged lions with faith and how everyone meets up with lions in their life.

The sad and painful part of it was that he really got loud and used the sound system to really abuse our ears and eardrums and it was so loud that my ears are still ringing. I liked that he went from the Spoken Word to the sung word, but if he could have done it without blasting my eardrums out I would have been much, much happier. Everyone around me was cringing, and it certainly didn't make a good impression. It just hurt.

Afterward, we went out with the congregation, and I thanked the ones around me for allowing us to participate in their service. They thanked us for coming and helping some of the members of their congregation with their homes. Some of the suits they were wearing were really beautiful, a few were actual Zoot suits with pinstripes and bronzed cloth. We in our t-shirts and jeans were woefully under-dressed compared to them, just as we'd been under-dressed at the gospel service in Seattle. They were out in their glory, and we were only in what we could pack.

So it is. Our carload went and found the Snippity Meow Bow Wow Spay and Neutering Clinic, right next to the Humane Society. It was the one landmark John remembered from the last time he'd been here along that street in Gulf Port. Yes, that does say something about John. laughter

We also went to find a grocery store for Bill. We found the smallest little shop behind the big mall. It was tiny, but it had soap and candy and drinks, as well as two slow cookers filled with boiled peanuts in both plain and Cajun spice. John had to get a cup of the Cajun spice ones, and I had to get another roll of paper towels for the women's bathroom. It was a very useful stop. The boiled peanuts were soft and mealy and spicy as anything, not quite my thing, but John happily passed them around for a bit of local flavor.

When we got back I got to work dumping my brain, but John passed his celphone into the women's room to be handed to me. It was Jet, he wanted to talk with me. But the celphone cut out in the middle of the conversation. Reception wasn't that good in the room, so I went out of the concrete room, perched at the top of the stairs to the second floor, outside, and talked with Jet for a while. He spoke about school and PE, about having fun with Granny and Grandpa, about playing, and when I asked he talked about how his tooth was moving a whole lot. They were supposed to have gone to a supper with everyone else at the church, all the supporters and the families that had been left behind; but I didn't get a hint of that. Jet was happy and cheerful and talked about wanting to call earlier, but we were probably busy or something, but he was glad that he got to talk to us and it was bedtime, so good night, Mama.

Good night, baby.

The other dads told me that their kids had fun playing with Jet, that was pretty funny in a way. But good, too, to realize he was connecting with the other families that way.

Afterward, John went off with a bunch of people go to out exploring. They said that they weren't going too far, but they wanted to do something for themselves after the quick dinner and the revival. I had to dump my brain in here. It's late enough now I should be going to sleep, too, to get up at the usual time. I'm not sure I'm going to avail myself off the breakfast as much in the morning as there have been promises to go to the bakery and get real pastries and coffee instead of the usual, greasier breakfasts. I'm kind of looking forward to the work, so I should get some rest in order to really be able to do it.

So good night.

I didn't actually get to finish what I started yesterday, but I was able to get up in time for the 6:30 breakfast, even though I stayed up until nearly 11:30 writing a story that has been haunting my brain after I finished last night's entry.

We got to the site by 8, as that was when the organization was opening the site up. Since we were up so early for breakfast we had some time to kill before the site opened, so we went and visited some of the houses that folks worked on the previous year. That was pretty good, all in all. We got to see the house of Sherry, the lady they did most of the siding and porches for last year.

Sherry and her mother lived together before Katrina. Their house was completely destroyed. They got $40,000 from FEMA, one of the few who actually got their money, and she found a contractor who said that he would build them a house for that amount of money. She gave him her money, he gave her plans, and then disappeared. Her son worked for the FBI and a few months later his coworkers got most of her money back, and with that money she went to the HOPE organization. And they got to build her house last year, and we got to see it. It's tiny and beautiful and the yard is nicely cared for. It was cool to get that kind of closure.

From there we went back to the house that we worked on yesterday, and they had enough people to finish the sheet rock work and then work outside to finish the outside enough for the final coat of paint. So they took five of us off to another house. It was a little brick house owned by an electrician who had tried to build it on his own for a while, but he ran out of money. So he's getting the work done on his house in exchange for using his abilities on other houses, which I think is a pretty good trade. In some ways.

So. Most folks probably don't look at the baseboards or the edging or finish work of their houses the way we had to. Every piece of edging at the edges of your walls, right on the floors and against the edges of the windows and doors, is all put on the wall with finishing nails. Nails with little tiny heads that should get set into the edging and deep enough so that it goes under the surface of the wood. Each of those little nail heads makes a little pock mark, and each little mark has to be filled in with putty of some kind. Then the putty gets lightly sanded down to the surface of the wood. After that's done, when paint goes on the edging it looks as smooth as glass.

I spent most of today filling in thousands of those little holes, on ever edge in the house, around every room, every closet, and every doorway. It was an amazing number of holes. Gabe and John did more edging and finishing of stuff around the house. I followed every edge that they put in. Kristen worked on the bathroom which was oddly tiled and finished as well. Teresa got to repaint the doors. For no good reason we could see, the doors had been hung and painted while hung, so that the paint actually dried on the frames they were hung in, so when someone opened the doors the paint peeled and ripped off the various surfaces. Ugh.

We stopped for lunch and kept going with that. I finally took a small break and took two closet doors and peeled off the ripped paint, sanded after the peeling, and then repainted them so that they looked a lot better. Not perfect, but at least something I wouldn't be upset to have in my home. Basically, by doing all the puttying today, it should be dry by tomorrow, so we should be able to do the good finishing work on the baseboard tomorrow. There is a ton of work still to do. It was fun having Gabe relay exactly what we're supposed to do. I'm going to figure out that fascinating dynamic tomorrow.

At 4 we had to stop to meet at the Baptist church to listen to a spiel about the Back Bay Mission, where it had come from and where it was going and trying to do. The main mission for the Mission is to better life in the Back Bay, which includes Biloxi and the neighboring cities. There's been a ton that they've had to do since Katrina and it's been really hard. Since the beginning of the year, the numbers of volunteers has burgeoned, and it's been quite a task for them to keep up since, at the same time Federal funding and private funds have dwindled for relief from the hurricane. It's understandable as it's been nearly two and a half years since the storm and interest isn't nearly as big. But there are still a huge number of destroyed houses that need help getting fixed.

It turns out that the FEMA trailers have deadly amounts of formaldehyde in them, so there's been a movement by the Federal Government to kick everyone out of the trailers. The problem is that there are no plans for what to do with those displaced people, so the local agencies have been the ones to get hit by the brunt of the problem. They have to figure out what to do with all these new homeless people.

So what we do makes a difference, even in the smallest bit. The local are getting tired, and with all the funding dwindling, they've been losing what hope they have. It's going to probably make another exodus from the area as people are going to face up to the fact that even if they want to stay here they may just not be able to as there won't be the kinds of help and money that they need.

That was sobering.

Everyone was nodding off by the time the information session was over. It was late, we were filthy from working, and we were all sore and tired. The volunteer coordinator came and had us sing two songs because we're likely to go to a revival meeting tomorrow, all together, and he wanted us to have something to sing there. It was fun, too. Very repetitious songs with slow, long refrains that were meant to just be loud, not melodious, so no parts to learn or anything complicated, just something with heart.

From there we went to a grocery store so that Kristen could find some yogurt. John and I wandered the store, too, and I almost bought a whole box of Moon Pies, but remembered that I can actually buy those back in Colorado if I really wanted and carrying a whole dozen of them was just a bit too much to contemplate.

Instead, I bought a five pound bag of White Lily flour. The all-purpose light on protein, soft summer wheat flour which I just can't find in Colorado. Nearly the whole of the Colorado wheat crop is hard winter wheat, which is great for bread, but not so great for light and fluffy biscuits or really light pie crusts or cakes and things. I know that one can use cake flour, but it isn't the same as real White Lily without the self-rising agents. I know, I know, I traded a light box of Moon Pies for a five pound bag of flour? But the problem with the Moon Pies are that they're fragile and easily broken, and there isn't really any protection in their box. A bag of flour can get through luggage bashing, no problem.

Kristen got her plain yogurt, no problem, and Teresa got some lightly sweetened fruit yogurt, no problem either. So both of them got their fix.

From there we got back to the dorms, got our showers, did some laundry, and then headed off to dinner. It's been pretty remarkable, for me at least, the way the laundry loads The Blow Fly Inn was recommended by one of the locals working on the first house we'd worked on, and so we all went there. It was absolutely fantastic. The waitress, Helen, had a come back for every bit of humor that our crew sent her, and she enjoyed the exchange immensely. She was sharp as a whip when John and some of the other boys got a bit too rowdy and she put them handily in their places.

The food was really excellent, too. They carried two local beers and I think we went through nearly four pitchers of the darker one and one pitcher of the light. For an appetizer we ordered the fried green tomatoes, and they arrived right out of the grease. They were crisp, tangy, and I slathered mine in their special mayonnaise, they were simple and deep-fried and quite good. I got a cup of the she-crab bisque and a oyster and shrimp po boy, thinking that a soup and a sandwich would still leave me room for dessert. The bisque was fabulous, thick and creamy and filled with big chunks of crab meat and flecks of the rich, salty orange roe, it was a lovely soup. The sandwich was amazing, too, the soft white roll toasted with mayo and lettuce and tomatoes surrounding big, fat, tender oysters crisp fried along with medium sized sweet, firm shrimp also crunchy and fried. It was heroic in proportions, too, so I couldn't eat it all, but I did manage to search out and eat all the tender, juicy oysters.

Then, for dessert, John and I shared a piece of the pecan pie. She cut us a good four inch wedge of the monster, and it had a big cookie crust and when I took the first bite I realized it had a good shot of bourbon in it as well. It was absolutely fabulous with a ring of whipped cream after being warmed for us. It was so good the two of us demolished it after our huge dinners. I was amazed.

The conversations were wonderful as well, just talking about everything and anything with the folks around us, everything from the OUR center garden to the situation here in the Back Bay, from the food to books, from kids and it being a good thing, sometimes, to be away from the kids to "screwing around" with the sheet rock and the jobs we were doing and all kinds of jokes. The food was all served with little plastic flies, and when Don asked for some for his grandkids, he got a whole handful of them to take with him. The waitress really liked us.

After dinner, John got a call from home, and he took it out into the rain. It was a slow, lovely drizzle, reminding me of so many of Seattle's rains, slow and not so much wet as just oozing water from the air. I basked in it while John talked with Jet on the phone. Eventually he handed the phone to me, and Jet babbled happily about his scoring against Mikayla as he played a game with her while he was on the phone. He was happy and didn't seem to mind that we weren't there, though he was happy enough to talk with us while he could. He didn't care one way or another if we were talking or not, so when I said good-bye he said good-bye happily enough and hung up when he was done. Happy boy. No separation anxiety while he has someone else to play with. I think my job as a mom has been done well up to this point. I'm glad to know it this way.

The drive home was interrupted with one of the dads getting a call from his son filled with Star Wars references and we talked Star Wars all the way home. That was fun, too. "Hey, I told my wife I was going to a church retreat, you can't laugh so much!" Wrong church. *giggles*

I am full, warm, and happy. I got rained on! I'm probably going to bed so that I'll actually have eight hours of sleep, and I didn't have my contacts in today to get all dusty and irritated. So it's been a really good day.

We had a pretty good Monday, despite the fact that it was Monday, which is the day where all the building projects try and get coordinated and figure out whom is going to go work on what.

We actually started at 6:30 in the morning, which is when breakfast starts getting served here. There was an alarm that went off at 6 a.m. but I slept through it. So I'm probably setting one for 6:15 for tomorrow morning. They served pancakes and bacon and I was probably the last person served as, well, that's just the way I am. I'll admit that the coffee was really horrible as it had been brewing since probably 6 am. The reason for breakfast being that early was that the first coordinating meeting starts at 7:30 in the morning at the First Missionary Baptist church. Some 50 people all showed up from Indiana, Ohio, Philadelphia, Oregon, and our big Colorado group. It was a pretty large gathering, but one of our guys, Gary had arrived with his wife, Vicki, several days before we had, and he'd been scoping out all the projects and what we could do on them.

John and I met Gary and Vicki at church, and they'd both gone with him last year. Gary was a building inspector, so he knows building inside and out and how they're supposed to be built. So he really knows his stuff. Their son, Gabe, is a contractor and really good at what he does as well.

Fred was in our group this time, too, and he'd flown in with Teresa and Gabe, the son of Gary and Vicki. Fred's the husband of my massage therapist, and he's a technical artist and an excellent photographer as well as pretty handy with the tools. Both he and Bonnie, his wife, go to our church as well. Teresa we met at church, and she's a nice lady that's very active in a lot of things and she came on this trip without her husband as did Kristen, who was on the plane, yesterday.

The Parsons, Marian and John joined our group as well. They'd driven from Colorado in their Prius, as they had other vacation plans as well. John Parsons has been in construction as well, so our group had a lot of experts, and it made it easier for the job manager to just go on with their other job. He just left it in the hands of our capable folks to do the planning and execution on getting things done.

At the Baptist church Gary was asked to pull 10 or so people to go work with him. Those folks went with him to the East Biloxi Coordination, Relief, and Redevelopment Agency (EBCRR), where we got an orientation on what they do and how they do it, and most of the folks managing the place have lived here and lived through the hurricane. There's still a lot of pain over the whole thing. Something that struck me, though, was the one man who said that there are two kinds of angels now involved with the whole thing. The first were the people who were struck and harmed, people who needed help to get up again and were willing to ask for it.

The second kind of angels were the kind that were coming to help. He said no one believes they deserve to be helped. That really struck me, that no one ever believes that they deserve to be helped, and the whole concept of group after group after group of complete strangers coming to this area just to help them have a home was astonishing to him, to all their clients, and to everyone involved in the project. When the hurricane happened, and this guy was involved in the first groups that came just to help, he and his friends felt that they were about to see something they'd never seen before. That so many people would all just volunteer their time and efforts still amazes him and everyone that works with coordinating all these volunteers. The numbers of volunteers in just the last year have jumped astronomically, until all the missions and places that take volunteers have actually been overwhelmed by the number of people who are coming.

I think that says something about the American public.

It says something about our group that the manager of all the work sites saw us coming on the list of volunteer groups and said, "Finally, a group that actually knows what it's doing. I'm glad they're here." Nearly half our group either has construction experience or worked as handymen or on sites. So in every single group that we split into, someone on the site knew what to do and could answer questions whenever anyone had any. Best of all, the whole group, experienced or not, was very much into the standard of "Do it as if you were working on your own home." So the standards were great across the group and that made it really easy to work with everyone.

When we got to the site, the site manager thanked us for our time and efforts. He said that no matter how little we seemed to get done, it was important because it was just one more thing someone else didn't have to do. I rather liked that attitude, as with all the houses that are still washed out, it could feel very futile to only "finish" one house or even just a stage of a house.

Our main goal was to work on a house that needed sheet-rock installed in it. There was stuff that also had to be finished on the outside of the house, but the big job was to get the sheet rock to a professional level. The group that had installed the sheet rock in the house had not done a stellar job, they'd left screw heads still sticking out of the walls, and some of them they'd broken the paper on the sheet rock with so that they were sunk too deep.

So, for those that don't know, sheet rock is the stuff that is hung on the frame of a house for the interior walls. It underlies wallpaper, paint, or whatever the interior walls are finished with. It's basically slabs of chalk-like substance that is attached with screws to the studs. And it actually provides some structural stability for the house on the inside. The screws shouldn't break the paper too deeply or else it will actually damage the structural strength of the slab of rock, and they can't stick out because when the folks come to finish the wall, then the wall will have bits of metal sticking up out of the straight, smooth surface. So it's pretty exact as to where the screw head has to lie in order for it to perform both functions.

So, yes. I spent the whole day screwing around.

I really like that kind of exacting work. I love doing detail work like that, especially with power tools. John handed me an electric drill with a battery pack (no cords for me!), and let me go. I happily went over a whole room, line of screws by line of screws and tried to fix every problem I came across. If someone sets a screw into sheet rock that doesn't actually sink into a stud, the screw will go into the sheet rock, but before the head can set it'll just twirl like a pinwheel. If the head doesn't set into the paper, then I know it's not actually set into a stud. So I had to take all of those out, find out where the stud was, and then set it into a place where it would meet wood. That way I could take care of all the loose screws.

I also set extra screws where they'd broken the sheet rock too deeply, and I set screw heads just a bit into the paper when they stuck out far enough to thunk against a putty knife.

If this sounds boring to you, it probably would be. *laughter* I'll admit, though, that I had the most fun setting new screws into new sheet rock, because then I didn't have to deal with other people's mistakes. There were three different rooms, a closet, and some other places that needed new sheet rock, so I had plenty to do. The bathroom had to be completely done with water resistant sheet rock, and the back of the kitchen splash guard had to be replaced with the stuff as well. It's a lot like screwing on a deck, when I thought about it, as the screws have to be set at almost exactly the same height as well. Enough into the wood to not stick out of the deck, but not so deeply that it would damage the wood involved.

Two other ladies did all the correction work in the back bedroom. When I'd finished with what I could do in one bedroom, Fred took over and did all the things I had no clue how to do, like the corners and filling in a substantial gap. He also knew enough to fill in all the other gaps in the number of screws along the boards. Michael, John P., Gabe, and John did most of the livingroom and kitchen.

For me, though the biggest difference was that a deck is always underneath me, so getting leverage is easy. Sheet rock not only goes on the walls, it goes on the ceiling as well, and even a five pound drill can get heavy when it's over my head all the time. It's also tough to get leverage from all angles, and harder even from a not all that stable ladder. The best thing, though, was that there was a lift that took sheets of sheet rock and held them against the ceiling! When John and I did ceiling sheet rock, we'd had to hold it up against the ceiling ourselves. Ugh. That was hard work, as those sheets can be really, really heavy.

Lunch was a good break for me. The Mission packed white bread sandwiches with lunch meat and American cheese along with Cheetos, mayo and mustard packets, and some water or pop. But we were all hungry enough to just scarf the stuff down. I hate white bread, but it was food. And I was hungry. I do manual labor on a frequent basis, now, what with the OUR center garden, I am getting more used to it, I think, than I used to be.

I think, perhaps, that that is why I did a lot more sheet rock screws in the afternoon than I think I even did in the morning. Part of it was because it was mostly installing the new stuff rather than just working over other people's mistakes. I helped with the higher wall screws. Gary, Gabe, and the two Johns worked like mad to measure, cut, and just set up sheet rock for us to install completely. They'd set enough screws to hold it up, and we'd do the work of setting the necessary number of screws for each underlying stud along the length of it. When the Bells showed up, Jim and JoAnn, they started right in on a couple of closets and the laundry room.

My right hand started to blister where I gripped the screwdriver, so I got my gloves on before it got much beyond irritated. I didn't want one day's worth of work to disable me for the following days. It made me think about Byakuya and Kaoru and their hand guards. I had almost sprained my right wrist, yesterday, on lugging stuff around. Today, though, it felt just fine, so I just used it as much as I could.

While I took a mid-afternoon break to down a whole bottle of water, the daughter of the woman whose house it was drove up. Several folks who had met her at Shaggy's a nearby bar that has great burgers, all said hi to her. It was cool to have already established a type of connection with the owner of the house. I think we might go there Friday night for dinner, just to say hi and see if she remembers us.

It was funny, though, as we're not used to actually feeling sweaty as a group. We were joking about sweating like pigs, because in Colorado, with the altitude and the lack of humidity, we nearly never get wet with sweat unless we're nearly killing ourselves. Here, at sea level with 80% humidity, we were sweating a lot, and it was pretty funny for quite a few of us. Yeah, we are a little weird.

The site manager closed down the site a bit after 5, and Gary told me I should stop, as it would still be there tomorrow. So I did. We'd finished pretty much the whole interior of the house, which was two bedrooms, a kitchen, the hallway, and a small livingroom. We'd had to use new sheet-rock for the livingroom and kitchen. So there was a lot of work done in just the first day and that was only our group, which was less than half the people we'd brought. The only thing left were the extra screws in the bathroom sheet rock, the things I was working on right at the very end. By the end of the day we were all covered in sheet rock dust and gritty with it. I think that wearing my contacts was probably a mistake. I'll probably use my glasses tomorrow and gain a bit more eye protection along with not having contacts for the grit to just get at.

We went back to the Seashores, and jumped for the showers. There's only two in our room, but we happily went for it, and I got third shower and it was very, very good to pour hot water all over my head. *happy sigh*

It was really funny, to me, when several folks said, "HEY! My towel's still wet from yesterday!!"

It's another Colorado thing. Again, we're used to the fact that if we leave out anything, even nearly wringing wet, it will be dry the next day. Nearly no matter how wet it is. I've had a bucket of water pretty much disappear after sitting out for a few days. So to have a damp towel NOT dry was really surprising to us. But we figured out that the outside dryer worked just fine, and if we really wanted dry towels that was the way to go. So, after our showers, the ladies threw our towels into the dryer and they were dry in minutes. Whew.

Dinner was at Cafe New Orleans: Country Cajun Cooking. They were a small sports bar, and not very busy on a Monday night, so we got all 29 folks into one room, and a big L-shaped table and we all sat down and ate and drank and talked about our day. The next two days were going to be independent, everyone would do what they liked; but Thursday is going to be the Shed and Friday will likely be Shaggy's. So we took advantage of everyone being in one place at one time. The whole crew was working on at least five different projects, so our days are going to be pretty widespread.

Angie and Mike were working on taping and finishing someone else's sheet rock hanging, filling in all the cracks and then applying tape to all the joints between the sheets. They worked in a house that wasn't exactly square, the floor probably slanted towards the sea.

The food was okay. Both John and I got the Cajun sampler that had a bit of etouffe, creole shrimp, gumbo, and red beans and rice. It was far too much for me to eat, but I ate what I liked. I also got a "stuffed crab" just to see what it was like, and it was almost exactly like my overstuffed shrimp. So I don't have to ordered stuffed seafood anymore. So I'm happy about that. And it was good to taste a little bit of everything, even though I'd known what they were all like, it was kind of neat to try their versions of everything.

I also drank two whole glasses of sweet tea. I think I was a little dehydrated, and it helped a lot. We came back to the shores, and I'm just writing. A group went off to a bar to drink and watch basketball and stuff. I decided to catch up a little in my corner. I have a little corner next to my bed where there's a chair, a power outlet, and enough light for my laptop, which is to say not much. I feel nicely isolated in my little corner, and I can just sit and write for a while. So I might get just enough "alone" time to really digest as I go.

I'm sore, but not too sore. I think that tomorrow will start earlier as we know what we're doing, where we're going, and who is going where. There should be no need to reorganize. I really want to finish that bathroom, too. I like finishing what I start.

Last year, John went with ten other people to Biloxi, MS to work on rebuilding houses. Jet and I stayed home and had a pretty good time together by ourselves. But I kept wondering if there wasn't something I could do, too.

I know... a bunch of highly paid professional people going down to do construction jobs. It seems almost a waste of time and potential money. Why not just donate a week's pay to the Mission instead? I don't have a great answer for it other than the fact that I really wanted to get my hands on the work of fixing something that's broken. To do something about what's wrong, still, and still needs to be fixed. And it's not just the buildings that need fixing, everyone says that some of what we're doing is going and listening to people's stories, hearing what they went through and being able to take that away with us.

I'm not sure I even care who was "supposed" to fix it anymore. I don't really care about the debate as to whose responsibility it is anymore. I just wanted to take responsibility for what I can do about fixing people's lives, fixing a community that's really broken, and doing what I can to make the world just a little bit more fair.

Even with all those high ideals I had real difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that I had to pack for 70° weather rather than for the 40° that I've gotten rather used to at home. It's been a cold spring. But it helped that I was really trying to be sparse in packing, since there are laundry facilities there. We packed for four days rather than the seven that we were going to be there for, and added tools, bedding, and our towels. The dorms weren't going to have all the linens, though they could lend stuff it's nicer to have your own.

We're working through the East Back Bay labor organization, and staying at The Seashore, which is a Methodist Retreat Center right across the street from water. It's an amazing deal $75 for a whole week's worth of bedding, shared bath, and breakfast, packed lunch, and dinner every day. But it's only available for folks that are going to be working for the week. So we had to pack a few amenities like our own bedding, our towels, and pillows. I was amused to find that I have practice enough at packing that by the time I was done and had written the note for the Things To Remember In The Morning that I pretty much fell asleep and didn't dream or worry about packing at all. That's pretty good for me.

The alarm went off at 6 am, and I got up, showered, and couldn't stomach anything. Jet has a saying, "It's not morning until after breakfast." I have to agree with him. We all drove to the church, and thirteen people met up there to get into three different vans to get to the airport. Folks have been great volunteering things like getting us places.

It took a while, and Jet begged and begged for me to play foosball with him for a while, so I did until the last of the driving vans arrived. Then I gave him a big hug and he smiled and John gave him a big hug and he giggled and then he tried to climb into the van with us. Poor guy. But he realized he wasn't supposed to and got on his brave face, and he went with Granny and Grandpa to IHOP, so I hope that it's a treat for him.

We got in and I fell asleep, like usual. Napping girl. When we got to the airport check in was easy, and security was a snap, and we were in the concourses a good two hours before the flight. The flight is in one of the small jets, so we actually went all the way to the end of the concourse, down some stairs and through another concourse.

One couple dropped out ten minutes before the plane was boarded because one of them nearly passed out from a relapse of the flu, and it was really scary for a bit, so it was good that they didn't go and did go home. But it was really sad to lose them at the last minute like that.

This account is going to have a cast of 27 at this point, and I'll start with the eleven folks that were on the plane and try to connect the dots as to who is whom and how we're all related, or not.

I and John are married to each other. John went on the trip last year, where there were eight guys and three gals. Only one of the ladies made it back. I came along this year just because he had such a blast last year and because I was thinking I could help and do something and it would be an experience.

Don and Clay - They both went last year, and we know Don and his wife from our church. Don's a white-haired gentleman from the South, and his gracious wife, Dede worked last year, but had to do kid care this year, so didn't come. Clay is their son, who is in the construction business.

Bill -- was my boss nearly five or six years ago. He's a good guy, good sense of humor and works really, really hard.

Kristen -- A very levelheaded lady we know from church who is married to the guy that is part owner of the Pumphouse, one of our best local brew pubs. She teaches as a substitute teacher.

Alan -- A guy we know from church, his wife knits and works at a dance studio. Alan is an engineer, working in bioengineering, and has a great, quiet sense of humor that is really fun. I got to ride with him on the plane both there and back and I was very glad that he was okay with me just sleeping most of the way.

Angie and Mike -- Also from church. Mike's the moderator of the church, John's now the moderator-elect, so they have had to work pretty closely with each other on a lot of things. Angie has a wicked sense of humor and is really fun.

Lisa and Jeff -- They're from church, too, though I know the grandmother of their child a bit better as the head of the Board of Worship and one of the Disciples class members.

That was the plane load of folks. The flight left on time and got to Baton Rouge on time. It was a Frontier flight, so it had a puffin on the tail and wings, whose name, as given to us by the attendant, was Paxton. laughter I am always amazed by the level of detail people can go to. I napped another hour on the plane, either my nap-anywhere abilities were in full force or I'm just extremely sleep deprived from the last few weeks. Either is as likely as the other. But a drink and a snack revived me pretty well, and when we arrived at the Baton Rouge airport the world below us was deep verdant green. The trees were in full leaf, and the world was in late spring!

This is in comparison to Colorado where the buds are just starting to fatten and fill, the tulips and hydrangeas are just starting to come out of the ground, the trees are still stark skeletons, and the grass is still dead brown. There were ferns! And lots of plants and it was warm and humid and everything I couldn't imagine when I was in Colorado.

For those of you who are like me, and don't have any clue where Baton Rouge is compared to everything else, it's just a bit north and west of New Orleans, since it was that far inland it got very little storm damage. It also has much cheaper air flights, rental cars, and other amenities, so John decided that we'd all fly into there instead of into New Orleans, which is still pretty expensive in comparison.

John got all three of the rental cars, and I got to drive the first long stretch along the freeway. That was a lot of fun. Though it was really obvious that we weren't in Colorado anymore, as with the trees everywhere, all the sight lines were so limited it felt odd. In Colorado there usually isn't anything obscuring the horizon on all sides, the sky is wide, wide open there, and it's so odd to have it so closed in. We had Bill and Alan in the car with us and we had fun spotting all the Waffle Houses along the way.

The Waffle House seems to be a Southern institution, far more common than anything else on the road, and they're all tiny little brick buildings and they all seem to have someone inside them, eating at any hour of the day or night. It's pretty amazing because there seems to be one on every exit and nearly ever 200 feet in some of the more highly populated areas.

We stopped at Abita Springs, and the exit had a Waffle House, but our destination was the Abita Brew Pub. Abita beer was the only beer that they seemed to be able to get that was a locally brewed beer the last year they were hear, so John remembered the name and looked up the brew pub, and found that it was halfway between Baton Rouge and Biloxi. So we all stopped there and got lunch/dinner as we hadn't had anything on the plane. John was smart and got the jambalaya, a nice rice dish with plenty of sausage and seafood and the taste he gave me was delicious. I got the Overstuffed Shrimp Tchefuncte, mainly because I'd never seen it before.

It was good, too... though it was more like a giant, spicy hush puppy made from a very good bread-based stuffing all wrapped around a regular sized shrimp. The deep fried balls were then slathered in a white sauce. There were zucchini on the side along with smashed potatoes that were creamy and good. I didn't eat all the stuffing, but I enjoyed the vegetable and potatoes a great deal along with the shrimps.

The waitress shared the fact that since the storm, Abita has grown a great deal. Quite a few folks from St. Bernard's Parish have rebuilt in Abita, rather than in New Orleans. The whole town has doubled, and with all the new construction, everyone in town has been doing really well. The new personalities have meshed well with the town as a whole, and the workers, when they get paid, often spent a lot of that money right there in that bar. Hee. So that was pretty cool in that the local money came to stay local. As Kristen said, "Buy something at Wal-Mart and your money goes to China, buy a micro-brewed beer and your money stays local."

John drove from there, as we were starting to near the Gulf. Mike came with us, as Don had to go to New Orleans to pick up a couple more people.

First was a town called Waveland, which was at the eye of Katrina when she hit land. It was devastated, and last year, they had seen nearly nothing in terms of businesses, and there were trailer parks everywhere. This year, however, there were lots of signs of life and business, even on a Sunday there was plenty of traffic, open businesses, and even more than just the one restaurant they'd seen last year! It was pretty cool how much of it was built. But there were so many pockets of stuff that was still just rubble or cleared land that hadn't been built two and a half years after the storm. There were still a lot of businesses and buildings with boarded windows and empty lots. We just kept heading east along the shore.

There was a marina that was just a crazy mess of sticks last year, but now has a restaurant and all kinds of shrimp ships and other kinds of ships all parked there now. But a few miles down we saw another pier that had been left a complete mess.

The beach was a mess, as there's been a storm recently, and a lot of the sand had blown or been washed onto the street. But John and Mike were amazed to see people on the beach this year, as there hadn't been any last year, nearly at all. We saw all kinds of houses that were rebuilt but nearly as many were still wrecked or just completely cleared pads. It was kind of strange to see so many beautiful, stately, really expensive houses next to boarded up ruins and plain for-sale concrete pads. It would be unbelievable anywhere else.

We reached the Methodist Retreat Center not that much later. Seashores is the name of the place, and it houses people for $75 for a whole week in a dorm room like setup. So we can sleep 16 per room on bunk beds. It's not that comfortable, but it's better than nothing. And the price is right. I'm not quite that happy with it, but the bathrooms are better than most camping ones, and we can clean it more if necessary.

There we met up with nearly everyone else.

This included the three folks that flew in yesterday, at least six folks that came in by car, and a five folks from Philadelphia, who were a family that had met Don when he was here two years ago. So, in a way, it all kinda grew from Don, who spoke about it and got the group to come last year, and last year's group got everyone else to come this year.

I'll introduce those folks tomorrow as, honestly, I don't remember all the names at this particular time. Breakfast is at 6:30 a.m. and then there's going to be sitting around and waiting on what jobs are going to be assigned to whom, so I'll have more time to write, tomorrow, I think.

There was a small run to the grocery store, where I finally got a comb as I'd forgotten to pack one. And some water for the night. By the time we got back everyone was asleep because of the early start. I think that there might be a wifi connection in one of the RVs so I might have a chance to upload this while I'm out on the road. That would be more fun. Now if I could only find the cable for downloading my pictures!! Oh, well, no cable, so the pictures will be added after I get back home.

Spent more time doing hard physical labor in the last week than I've done in a very long time.

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I spent nearly all of today with a drill in my hand, when I wasn't feeding Jet, playing with Jet, watching a movie with Jet, or playing video games for Jet. Whenever I had the drill in my hand, Jet was playing outside, either on his playset or with all the neighborhood kids, so it wasn't all watching things. But it was fun to see The Incredibles again.

Mostly I worked on screwing down the boards for the new deck John is making. He's doing all the base work, setting the boards onto the base, and then letting me fill in all the gaps. Repeative, mindless, fun work for me. Just getting into the rhythm of getting the things in, one by one by one. A bit like knitting, really, and I can see my progress, row by row.

I did take some time to go to the OUR Center to water the plots I'd seeded. I also fed the plants that were growing so well in the warm spring sun. There will be snow sometime again in the the next few weeks, or else Colorado just isn't what it should be. March and April are the snowiest months for the region. Given the tremendous amount of snow we had in January and February, everyone was expecting us to get buried, but no such luck, yet.

Still, the peas are out and some of the oniony things and spinach, all of which don't mind the cold. The beets, carrots, and the like should go out soon, too.

I also took the time to get Jet some lunch and then we rode the three-wheeler to school. We met up with a bunch of the parents and other kids in Jet's class, and they admired his wheels. Hee. We rode up to the door, and I stayed while Jet played a bit, and then he charged in when the other kids were mostly in already.

I get to volunteer tomorrow! Yay!

John and I did stop off to get a new guiding sleeve for the long decking screws, and I got more lure for the wasp trap. I also managed to cook a nice tomato sauce from the oven roasted tomatoes from last fall, which I could finally face, and some canned tomatoes, onion, garlic, and a ton of basil. It was great with the cheese ravioli from Costco. Quick, simple meal, with Rhodes yeasty rolls that were hot and soft from the oven. The frozen rolls seem to have no trans fats or preservatives, as the freezing does well enough. I'm glad of that.

The kids swarmed the backyards this afternoon, after the kids came home from school. They were just everywhere, having a great time outside, and enjoying the 75 degree weather. Feels like *summer* not still, officially, winter. :-)