Holding Our Heads High

"I can go out on my front porch look at the cars passing by and hold my head up high now."



This exact quote was said to my crew leader last week after we fixed an elderly participant's water pump which in turn allowed him to have running water in his house for the first time since June. Up until that point, Wade had been collecting rain water in buckets around his house and using that for all his water needs except for drinking water.

The reason I'm mentioning this story is because remembering these kinds of moments are what help me get through the tougher days here in Kentucky. This week in particular has been really difficult for me. We have been tying up loose ends on several homes since I got here and so the work right now is minimal as we are transitioning into a new project. Monday and Tuesday we spent between 3 houses including Sue's (the one with the trampoline), Wade's, and Cheryl's (the first house I worked on when I got here).

Today, we went to go look at the new project we will be starting soon. Its in Knott County - about 45 minutes to an hour away from the office - quite a drive to say the least. This project is going to be quite extensive - including putting up siding/underpinning/soffit/fascia on the whole house, painting the entire interior, replacing all the windows, and redoing the kitchen - including new cabinets. Today was the first day we had seen the house and we spent the day taking measurements and doing all the preliminary work so that we could order the necessary materials.

The past three days have just dragged for me. Its hard when the projects are down to the end and the work to be done is only enough for one or two people; it makes the day seem much longer than normal. I would much rather be running around and sweating and busy any day. I don't know why but these days have made me more tired than the week I spent mucking out houses during Disaster Relief. I think the worst part of it is that I feel like we're not accomplishing anything right now; like we are just stuck in this strange in between time.

But then today I was thinking back on the jobs we've completed and I remembered how grateful the people were that we were able to help.

People like Wade who now has running water and a washing machine.

People like Sue who told us that when she looked at her house now she was proud of it rather than embarrassed.

Those moments are the reason I am here and why this in between time is okay. Because without it we would never get to the point with our participants where they can say they're genuinely proud of their home.

And so regardless of little it seems like we accomplished this week, I am going to hold my head up high because I know in the end it will all be worth it.

Twenty-Two

I have officially celebrated my CAP birthday.

That is the one birthday I will have during my year of service. I remember when I was talking with one of my friends who was also doing a year of service and she was discussing the implications of a year away from your home. A year encompasses a lot: a birthday, a Christmas, a Thanksgiving, a Fourth of July, and so on and so forth. You get my point. All those annual events that you are used to celebrating with your family the same way every year are going to be experienced in a different way.

One of the best parts of my birthday was a string of picture messages that I received from my Mom throughout the day. It started about 11am and continued throughout the day until almost 10pm at night. To mark my 22nd birthday, she sent me 22 pictures of things that related to/had the number 22 in them. It was simply amazing, especially this photo of my Meme.

The rest of my week (although it was hard to top the high standard set by my Mom) was also really great. We had a volunteer group come in from Significant Living which is an organization for people of ages 50 and older who are dedicated to service work. This particular group was a little bit older in fact one of the ladies I worked with was 79 years old. I only hope that when I am that age that I am willing and able to still be participating in service trips. Together with our group, we were able to finish up the laundry room that we had started last week and to complete another job that was on our To Do List. Both of the jobs consisted mainly of painting and finish work which was good for our group because it was enough to keep everyone busy all week.

The second house we worked on belonged to an older man who lives in a house which he built by himself from scrap pieces of wood and discounted supplies. He lives at the end of a holler by himself as his wife passed away several years ago. She is buried right near the end of his driveway about two feet away from his mailbox and he walks up there occasionally to put flowers out. Wade is quite the character to say the least. He doesn't get many visitors at his home so when six people show up at his home it just makes his day. He especially loved the fact that he could flirt with five ladies for two days straight.  His house was originally an Elderly Housing Project, but just needed some last things done on it to finish up the job. We were able to spend two days there and finish everything that was left to do including painting his entire house - walls and ceilings. Right before we left on Thursday, the Significant Living group and Wade took a picture together which he would only agree to if he had a lady on each arm. As you can see, they obliged him.

  

All in all, a pretty solid birthday week.

Check It Off the List



That's right. Number 52 is done.

I had a breakthrough yesterday at work after I switched my front foot entering into my cartwheel. Apparently, being right handed does not mean you are 'right-footed' for cartwheeling. On the contrary, I put my left foot first and was suddenly able to do what you see above. And I continued to do it about fifteen times in a row just to prove it wasn't a fluke.

I'd say that it was a pretty darn good birthday present.

Jack-of-All-Trades

I have determined that this is what I'm going to become by the end of my time in Kentucky - a jack of all trades. Not only will I know a little bit of a ton of different types of construction and home repair projects, I have been adding some other skills to my repertoire.

Some might call them resume-builders.


Lumberjack

I spent about two and a half hours last Friday up at Camp Shawnee by myself working on what may become a weekend ritual of sorts. As discussed in my last post, I recently became certified to operate a chainsaw. This training took place up at Camp Shawnee and the remains of this event includes an enormous pile of un-split logs of various widths from all the trees that were cut down. I decided that one good way to spend my day off would be to split some firewood for next year's summer camp. So I borrowed an axe and a splitter from Tony - my housing crew leader- and headed up to Camp to further advance my lumberjack skills. It took a little time to get into the swing of things, but I managed to leave this evidence of my lumberjack prowess behind. (Amazingly, I did this without any injury to myself.)

Trampoliner-Extaordinaire

Or at least I'm striving for this title. The house that we are currently working on belongs to a lovely woman named Sue. She has a granddaughter that comes to visit frequently and therefore there are several toys available for Kate and I to entertain ourselves with. Among these is an amazing trampoline which has become a staple of our work day. Every day after lunch Kate and I have 'Trampoline Time' in which we jump around like 5 year olds while Tony just shakes his head at us in disbelief. At first, it was solely used for jumping purposes which surprisingly is quite entertaining for being so simple. Then Kate took to double bouncing me when I wasn't paying attention which for some reason always seems to send me flying. Thank goodness the trampoline is surrounded by netting or I am 100% that I would have broken at least one bone by now.

As fun as jumping and getting flung into the netting is, it soon became apparent that it was time to step it up a notch. And that is how I started doing flips on the trampoline. At first, they were just little somersaults, but now that I've been doing them for a couple weeks I have upgraded to the ones shown in this picture. Today, I decided that I would try and land on my feet rather than on my butt like I have been doing. However after alternately: 1)under-rotating and landing on my back, 2)over-rotating and landing on my face, 3) landing on my feet only to have my knees give out and then come up and hit me in the chest/stomach consequently knocking the wind out of myself (3 times), 4) propelling myself face-first into the netting - I think I may need to work on that trick for a bit longer.

Cartwheeler

This particular life-skill has more to do with my 101 list than the fact that I am in Kentucky. #52: Learn how to do a cartwheel. I have never in my life been able to do one. I don't know if it was a lack of opportunity, inability on my part, or just some part of childhood I missed out on, regardless, I've never done one in my life. I figured its one of those things that everyone has done at some point in their life so now at the age of 21 (almost 22) I am learning how to do one. Inspired by 'Trampoline Time', I decided to tackle this task while at the work site. Learning to cartwheel is an interesting experience; more embarrassing than painful but definitely a combination of the two. Needless to say that one is a work in progress.

Leprechaun Charmer

If you have not yet seen the YouTube video about the Mobile, Alabama leprechaun, this one may not make any sense, but it will after you click the above link (just click where it says Youtube) and watch the video. If you have seen the video, than you know about the magical leprechaun 'flute' that one gentleman proudly displays claiming it was passed down from his "great-great grandfather". Oddly, his flute closely resembles, to the point of being identical, a scaffolding pin which we have an abundance of at our workshop. Tony found Kate and I our very own leprechaun flute which we hope to have the opportunity to use in the near future so we can get some gold. We want da gold!

Laundry-Room-Putter-Together

After reading the above posts, you may be thinking that I don't actually do any work during my work day. I will admit that it is hard between trampoline-jumping, being a gymnast, and charming leprechauns to do any of my actual job, but somehow we manage to fit in quite a bit of housing work in between all the ridiculousness. This week I worked with Andrew - another long term volunteer - to finish a laundry room at our participants house. When we got there, there was only one coat of mud on the drywall and the floor still needed to be put down and the ceiling needed drywall put up. I got to learn all about drywall over the past 4 days - from holding it above your head while trying to screw it into the joists to mudding over the rough spots multiple times to sanding down the dried mud and consequently inhaling large quantities of dust. We also laid down laminate flooring, put in a new light fixture, and did all the trim Although, I may now have a pound of drywall dust residing in my lungs, we did manage to just about completely finish the room except for some last finishing touches which we will do next week and then close the book on this house.

I don't know that my resume is prepared for all of this.

So Far...

Instead of writing a ton of little blogs about all the projects I have worked on during my first month (yes, I have already been here for over a month - crazy!) in Kentucky, I decided to just post one all encompassing post to try and sum it all up for you.

Here it is, my life in Kentucky so far.

7.26 - 7.29

My first week in Housing was a little off because my entire program was being utilized in another area - Disaster Relief. About a week or so before I arrived, there were terrrible flash floods in Pikeville County that completely destroyed homes and were the cause of a few deaths. Over 600 homes were affected, and half of those affected were completely destroyed. I couldn't believe the destruction I saw when we went out to my first work site. Houses completely destroyed and pushed off their foundations. Cars pushed into the hillside or washed into the creek. I took some pictures on my cell phone of the devestation, these are some of the worst.

Disaster relief efforts (http://www.christianapp.org/2010/07/pikeville-flood-disaster-relief-2/) had been going on since the previous week, but I was able to spend a week helping out. Relief work is not what some may consider the most appealing. It is really hard, dirty work. Mucking out basements and homes, tearing up flooring and walls, disinfecting crawl spaces, etc. And all in 'dirty water'; that is water that has been contaminated with sewage.

One of the more interesting jobs, I got to do was to muck out and disinfect underneath people's homes witha few other people on my crew. The first trailer I did this to we were able to crouch and walk through most of it and then at some points, we had to crawl on our hands and knees. However, the second house we went to there was about a foot and a half space for us to work with. Kate (who works on my housing crew) and I spent what felt like an eternity crawling on our bellies underneath the house disinfecting with bleach to try and prevent the growth of mold that can destroy a home. At one point we looked at the supports holding up the house above us and noticed that the house was being held up by a combination of cement blocks, posts, and old tree stumps. Not the most reassuring feeling ever. The picture shows the hole we climbed in to get to the space and is probably the height of the area we were working in.

8.2 - 8.26

The month of August meant the beginning of my actual work in the Housing Program with CAP. I was placed on a crew with another volunteer, Kate, who lives in the same volunteer house as me. She just recently signed up for a second year with CAP and we will most likely (hopefully!) be on the same crew for the entire next year. Our crew leader, Tony, is a CAP employee who moved to Kentucky from Chicago in order to work with and for CAP. This is all of us (plus another volunteer from Disaster Relief): Kate, me, and Tony.

So far in housing, I have been doing a sort of crazy amazing assortment of jobs. A lot of the jobs we have now are ones that are in the final stages and are down to the final loose ends. My first week we had a volunteer group come down from a church in Virginia and they helped us finish a house that Tony and Kate had been working on. We replaced a porch roof, put up Soffit and siding, and touched up some paint. The next house we worked on just needed a window trimmed and to have some caulking done so that only took a few hours to accomplish and then we were able to cross that house off the list as well.

Since then we have been working on a house that was a job that was started during WorkFest (CAP's alternative spring break trip program). It still needed: the gables to be finished, soffit and fascia put up, windows need trimming, caulking, porch handrails, two concrete pads to be poured, the back deck to be finished, and a laundry room to be finished including flooring and walls. We've been going out to this job almost every day and we're making a lot of progress, but there's still a fair amount of work to be done, mostly on the back deck and inside.

We also spent some time one week helping move furniture from a 5o ft trailer that was parked on our property into the upstairs of our volunteer home. Kate and I spent several days hauling dressers up and down stairs, disassembling and reassembling bunk beds, and carrying desks into storage. By the end of the second day, we had had enough and decided to climb on top of the closets to the very back of the trailer and rest (aka escape) for a little. Unfortunately, Tony and his camera found us.

8.27 - 8.28

This past week I was able to undergo chainsaw training and am now certified to operate a chainsaw. Yes, I know - scary. But no worries. The very first thing I ever did with a chain saw was cut down a 35 - 40 ft tree and drop it in the right direction without killing myself or anyone else. I wish there were pictures to prove it, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

Well, that is my life up to this point.

I'm sure the adventures will only get more ridiculous and crazy as time goes on.

Or at least I hope so.