Dr. Scholl's Gel Insoles Are a Gift From the Gods

So this post is kind of a mish mash. I started writing it Wednesday, continued Thursday, and now I’m posting it here at the Habitat office on Friday. There’s no internet at the house we live in, so I’m just writing in Word documents until I get internet. So…here we go.

We left on Saturday morning for a lovely three-day road trip to New Orleans. We had decided that we didn’t want to drive through Kansas, so we went south into New Mexico, then over through Texas. We were caravanning with Sun 5 (led by team leader Dani), who is also doing Habitat construction down here. They were working at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital last round. This was my team’s first real trip, and we were all excited about it. We pulled over at the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign to take a team picture. Then we also took pictures at the entertaining visitor’s centers in Texas and Oklahoma. (Much to our surprise, the route we had planned took us across the top of Texas, into Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We didn’t know until we passed the Welcome to Oklahoma sign.) My team was all about the silly pictures, while Dani’s team mocked us behind our backs. Their loss.

We stopped for the first night at a hotel in Amarillo, TX and ate dinner at the Boot Hill Saloon and Grill. It was even better than a place with that kind of name would make you imagine. It was decorated all fancily and the waitresses were in saloon type dresses. The meals all had names like Billy the Kid or The Rancher’s Wife. (The Rancher’s Wife was the only non-red meat meal I saw on the menu.) The men’s room looked like an outhouse (I heard), but the women’s room was awesome. The stall doors were like the double swinging saloon doors with a pull chain from the ceiling to flush the toilet. There were also a few feather boas and a dress hanging on the wall. We may or may not have had all the girls on my team and a few from Dani’s team in there at once taking silly pictures.

Did I really just devote half a paragraph to describing a public restroom? Yes, I believe I did.

The second day of travel took us across the bottom of Oklahoma, then down through Texas again. We spent the second night in Tyler, TX and ate dinner at the Lonestar Grill. It was like a tiny local diner. I had some fabulous breakfast for dinner. It was at this diner where I had my Texas Revelation, which I will now share with you. Everything in Texas is shaped like one of two things: the state of Texas itself or a star. Sometimes, to throw in a little variety, things will be shaped like a cowboy boot. There was a make-your-own-waffle thing at breakfast in our Amarillo hotel and it was shaped like Texas. I ate Texas for breakfast that morning.

Finally, at about 7:30 or 8:00pm on Monday, we arrived at our house in New Orleans! We had learned during lunch on the road on Monday that both the heat and hot water in our house weren’t working for the night but they would be fixed Tuesday. We had a choice between staying in our cold house or spending the night at a volunteer camp. (Specifically at Camp Hope, where Elmhurst people who did Habitat during spring break lived.) The team chose the cold house. We just wanted to get our stuff in and get settled. We found out when we got there that the circuit breaker was also not the greatest, so the lights in the bedrooms wouldn’t stay on for long. We got issued AmeriCorps sleeping bags, which are the kind that taper at the feet like a mummy (I think the Army uses them) and are supposed to be super warm, but I still didn’t sleep very well because I was too cold. The thermostat that wasn’t doing anything said the temperature inside was like forty-something degrees. It was pretty miserable.

Tuesday the 12th, we had our first day of work. We went to one construction site, that only had the house foundation done so far, and had a safety meeting with a bunch of other volunteers. We then found out that we would be working on a different site, where the house had already been started. The interior and exterior wall frames were already up, which is unfortunate because that’s my favorite part of building a house. My team actually got lucky, because Habitat frequently splits NCCC teams up, but we get to stay together. Dan, our site supervisor, did AmeriCorps Direct with Habitat last year. I had never heard of Direct before. He said he applied directly to Habitat, not to AmeriCorps. He was the assistant to a site supervisor for all of last year, and now he’s in charge of a house. Forest, Dan’s assistant, is in AmeriCorps Direct right now. All that happened the first day was Dan teaching us how to use a chop saw, circular saw, jig saw, and planar, all of which I have used for the past four years in the Elmhurst scene shop, and also a little bit while working with Habitat during high school. He would show us the tool, explain how to use it, demonstrate, then have all 11 of us do a practice cut. That took until lunch. After lunch, we would have had to leave early to get to a meeting with the Habitat volunteer coordinator anyway, but Christina decided to just take us back to the house to have some relaxation time after that unpleasant night in the house.

Wednesday the 13th in the morning, Heather, Rob and I had a weird task. We cut about 300 six or eight-inch squares of Tyvek (paper-like stuff that helps waterproof the house). Not what you think of when you think of construction work, but oh well. After that, most of my team worked on siding, and I had a fairly significant personal triumph. When I had done Habitat in high school, there was a time when I had to do siding. The siding was some kind of cement compound, and it was REALLY hard. Most of the time, I physically could not put a nail through it. Even five or six years later, I still get frustrated just thinking about it. I would hammer and hammer and hammer, and the nail would barely go in at all. Many times the nail would just fall back out. When I heard we were siding, I had a flashback to that frustration. Well wouldn’t you know it, Habitat still uses that same cement compound siding. But now, five or six years later, I don’t have much trouble getting a nail into it at all! I even had less trouble than some other people. It was pretty exciting for me.

After work, we attacked our house (the one we live in). It was built by Habitat, so it’s not a bad house, but it was pretty disgusting when we got here. The windows were caked with dirt and had no curtains or blinds, the floors were dirty, the only furniture was a couch and two loveseats, the bathroom was pretty gross, etc. After work, we cleaned EVERYTHING. We had gotten a little bit of furniture from the Habitat warehouse on Tuesday so we could arrange everything better. We also got curtains for all the windows and some carpet to put in various rooms. The house is SO MUC better now.

After dinner, six people went out to go to Whole Foods and Walgreens, leaving the house much emptier than usual. I love my team, but it was pretty pleasant. Christina had brought a TV to New Orleans for us to use, and Tomm brought his Xbox. (X-Box? XBox? Who knows.) There has already been some video game playing, usually a game where you just walk around and kill the zombies that attack you. I never played because I don’t even know how to use an Xbox/X-Box/XBox controller, but Rob helped me through the zombie game. It’s called Left for Dead 2. On the controller, there are two joysticks. One controls your body, the other controls your head. You have to use them simultaneously because you have to turn your head in the direction you want to go. Rob was very patient with me and gave me a little time to get used to moving around at the beginning, but it didn’t help much. The first thing we had to do was go down some stairs, and it took me about five minutes. Rob was getting attacked by zombies and shooting them all down and I trapped myself on the stairs. I think what happened was that I pointed my head down then forgot to put it up and just spun in circles. Those stairs were quite a challenge for me. After I figured out how to walk, every time I got attacked, I would just start pushing all the buttons. Rob would try to tell me how to do various special moves and techniques, but I would just push all the buttons. All while freaking out and yelling a lot. I’m proud to say I got through two levels without dying, but goodness. It was stressful.

Thursday the 14th, we just did more siding. All day. My right shoulder was pretty stiff this morning, probably from all the hammering yesterday, so that just made it more fun. But I was not nearly as sore as I was the first time I did Habitat and hammered all day. I’m stronger than I was when I was 17 years old! Woo hoo! Forest had some of us splitting up and working with some of the other volunteers, which was interesting. There’s a group of college kids here from Harvard, and an all male group from Kent State. They seem kind of like frat guys, and they’re all majoring in Construction Something. I didn’t even know that was a major. We call them the Bros (as in brothers). They never talk to any of us or the Harvard kids. Several of us worked with some of the Harvard kids today, and they were pretty cool. Highlight of my day: I said something to someone on my team about the Bros, and a Harvard girl was right there. She overheard me, and said “You guys call them the Bros too?!” It was hilarious. We now have an alliance with the Harvard group against the Bros. Nothing actually comes out of this alliance, we just kind of make fun of the Bros a little bit. The Harvard group is here all this week and next week (it’s still their winter break), but the Bros are only here this week.

Oh, and about the title of this post. I bought some Dr. Scholl's gel insoles for my steel toes while we were still at Calwood, and finally put them in my boots before we left for New Orleans. Oh my goodness, they are amazing. My feet would frequently hurt at the end of the day when I wore the steel toes at Calwood, but they’ve been totally fine so far here. If you have uncomfortable shoes, I highly recommend getting some of those gel things.

And about that picture slide show thing from Calwood - Christina said it was too big of a file to email, so I can't send it to anyone. (Until I figure out a way.) But she put it on Facebook, and I went and tagged all of us. I'm pretty sure anyone who is reading this is my Facebook friend, so you should be able to find it posted on my wall. I think it's highly worth watching, but I made it. So I might be a little biased. Make sure you have the sound on!

Well, that’s the first week. No promises when the next post might come, but I’ll do the best I can. I think I can probably find internet maybe once a week or so.