Too Much to Be Thankful For

This past week I experienced what I fear may begin to be a trend in my life - spending holidays away from my family. This past Thursday was the first time I have ever been anywhere but in Rhode Island for Thanksgiving, and if I end up living outside of the Northeast (as I plan on doing after CAP) then this may become more of a common occurrence than I would like it to. This is not to say that I did not have a wonderful time during my Thanksgiving break, but it was strange to not find myself sitting at the 'young people' table in my kitchen listening to my loud Italian family having the yearly discussion about how 'we really should eliminate one of the four courses from the meal' which is always followed by uproar and the firm decision that we could never do that because then someone's favorite would be gone. I am however comforted by the fact that I get to see my family in two short weeks and I probably saved myself a few thousand calories this Thanksgiving day.

Now for the re-cap of my Thanksgiving adventure to Okemos, Michigan.

I spent my break at Kevin's house with his family - his parents, older sister, and aunt - and another volunteer Caitlin who we both worked with at Camp the past two summers. We left for Kev's house on Tuesday morning and stayed until Sunday morning - the most time I've spent away from Kentucky continuously since moving here in July. The drive takes about 8 hours if you don't run into too much traffic and everything goes smoothly. This is me we are talking about so you should have already guessed at this point that things did not go according to plan and after stopping for lunch in Anna, Ohio, we went out to Kev's car (who I affectionately call Buddy - the car not Kevin) to find a flat as a pancake rear driver's side tire waiting for us. Now Kevin already despises the state of Ohio for reasons I still do not completely understand, but getting a flat tire was definitely not helping its reputation. He was able to get the lug nuts off, but unfortunately the tire was rusted to the car and no amount of kicking at it or yelling or pleading could get the tire to budge so we were forced to call AAA for assistance. While waiting for AAA to make an appearance, we discovered the front passenger tire was also really low on air and that Buddy was in desperate need of some oil. Needless to say, Buddy was in dire straights and deserved some some serious TLC which he fortunately was able to receive via a Truck Tire Stop right down the road. Despite my original misgivings about the tire place, they were really good and had our tire fixed up and us back on the road in no time and after some traffic near Ann Arbor we finally made it to our destination.



There were a couple things on our to do list for this trip, including hockey, some shopping, and a Jimmy John's trip. There was one last minute addition to the list - get my stitches out - as the hospital in Kentucky told me on Tuesday they were not quite ready to come out and I needed to return the following day. Therefore, Wednesday I found myself in a orthopedic surgeon friend of the McCullough family's office waiting to get my two stitches pulled out of my eyelid. I just have one piece of advice for all of you - don't ever get stitches in your eyelid. It is terrible both getting them in and getting them taken out. They are so tiny and your eyelid is so delicate and its just not an experience I would wish upon anyone. However, in the end I got both my stitches out and my eye is none the worse for the wear minus a tiny scar that I'm told is barely noticeable.

Myself, Caitlin, Megan (Kevin's sister), & Kevin

One place that we spent a good deal of our vacation at was the ice rink. We went on three separate occasions to be exact - twice to watch Kevin play pick-up hockey and once to go ice skating. Watching hockey can be quite entertaining, but it is also very very cold. I mean this should be an obvious fact since the place is composed of ice, but I didn't fully comprehend how cold it was going to be until after sitting on the bleachers for awhile and I noticed I could see my breath in the air. I have only been ice skating once before in my life and that was last year so I was pretty nervous about going to free skate. However, I did not do too badly at all. I even learned to skate backwards a little. Its a lot more difficult than I would have thought especially after watching all the guys at pick-up hockey seamlessly switching between forwards and backwards but then again most of them have been playing their whole life. Caitlin also had the chance to practice her figure skating skills while we were at the rink and therefore earned the prize for the most falls - a grand total of six. If you know Caitlin at all, this should not surprise you at all and in her typical style each fall was more entertaining than the latter complete with flailing arms and screaming.  

Before I continue on with the next story of my weekend, I need to throw a disclaimer out there.

*This next paragraph is not meant to insinuate in any way that Kevin is a bad cook rather that he is a highly entertaining one.*

Ok, now on with the tale. 

Caitlin trying the rice

First a little back story - Kate and I had recently decided at the house that Kevin should have a cooking show because it is so much fun to watch him cook. Once he gets more than one thing going on in the kitchen at a time - watch out! The other day he was cooking pasta on the stove top, had mozzarella sticks in the oven, and was warming up the dipping sauce packet in the microwave. It basically involved him running around the kitchen looking quite frazzled while he was trying to keep everything going at the same time without burning anything which he did manage to accomplish minus a small explosion in the microwave. Kate and I decided that we would produce said cooking show for him under the title of 'Oh Sh*t, the Pasta's on Fire' or the more PC title of 'Kitchen Catastrophes with Kevin'. I tell you this because while we were at his house Kevin decided to make rice and it could have been an episode on the show. He put the rice and water on the stove and it had been cooking for awhile when his mom came over and asked him if he was sure about the amount of rice he had put in the pot in relation to the amount of water. Kevin insisted he was sure he had done it correctly and grabbed the bag to prove his point and then realized that he had put too much rice in and now instead of the few servings of rice he had planned on making we had eleven servings of rice cooking on the stove. Because the ratio of rice and water was off, it took forever for the rice to cook and when it finally finished it was rather sticky, but have no fear it didn't go to waste as Caitlin was brave enough to help Kev finish off the eleven servings of rice.

Caitlin & I at the hockey rink

One of the last fun experience I have to share with you from our trip was the sleeping arrangements I had for the week. Caitlin and I shared a pull out couch for the trip which with any other person would most likely have been more than enough room. However, Caitlin has a tendency to be a very active sleeper. She not only talks and moves around in her sleep, but she is also a blanket hog and a sleep laugher. Yes, a sleep laugher which is just as creepy as you can imagine it would be. The last night of our trip I was having trouble sleeping and was lying in bed wide awake trying to hold onto the little bit of blankets I had left on my side when I heard Caitlin start muttering in her sleep and then burst out with this line "Damn you and your prosthetic leg!". I don't think I even want to know what she was dreaming about.

This post is just an overview of my week. There is no possible way that I could sum up the entire vacation in one post nor do I want to. This post alone has taken me way too long to write and I don't think I could handle sitting at my computer much longer. If you want to read another account of our trip than you can check out Caitlin's blog - just click HERE! 

I guess that all I have left to say is that if I had to be away from my family for Thanksgiving I couldn't have asked for a better way to enjoy the holiday than this past week.

Are You a Tough Girl?

Dremel



+



 Long Hair

 =

 2 stitches in my eyelid

I really don't know how to better explain what my Saturday night consisted of other than the above equation. Before I go on explaining, please know for all of you who are concerned that I am relatively fine and there shouldn't be too many lasting effects from this incident other than a new found respect for the Dremel.

Now for all the fun details including some gross pictures so consider this your warning if you are squeamish.



This is the tip of the dremel.
It used to be in one piece
and straight.



Last night I was sitting in my room working on some Christmas presents which I can't really explain any more other than the fact that it required the use of a Dremel because someone who reads this blog is the recipient of this present and I don't want to give it away. Anyway, I was dremel-ing away and out of nowhere my hair got stuck in the tip of the Dremel which because the Dremel spins caused the entire tool to wind up my hair and fly into my eye. The really odd part was that I was strangely calm when this happened. I grabbed the Dremel and held it away from my face and managed to turn off the power. Once I turned it off, my hair unwound from it with no problem and I started to try and figure out what exactly I had injured. Honestly at this point, I was just relieved I hadn't lost a chunk of hair to the power tool. That's when I felt a drip of something hit my hand and realized I couldn't really see out of my right eye and then I quickly came to the conclusion that rocking a bald spot for the holidays was really the least of my concerns.

I went and checked my eye in the mirror in my room and was excited to see that I still had an eyeball all in one piece, but there was a fair amount of blood dripping off my face. I decided the best thing to do was to get Kate to come check out the damage. It took a couple of yells and a "No this is really important!", but she came down the hallway to my room to see what all the fuss was about and after a preliminary "Don't freak out, but I'm going to show you something", I moved my hand off my eye and she was greeted with a site similar to this:

We went into the bathroom where we managed to clean off some of the blood and we determined that my only real injury was a cut on my eyelid and that a potentially amazing black eye was in the works. After some convincing from Kate, we headed off to the Emergency Room to get my eye looked at along with Kevin and my crew leader Tony and his wife Liz.

After waiting about two hours in the ER and explaining my story too many times to count, the doctor finally came in and looked at my eye and assured me they would be able to fix my eye up in no time. The doctor then asked me, "Are you a tough girl?" I knew at this precise moment that I was in trouble and all I could manage to say was "I guess we're about to find out". The problem with cutting your eyelid is that the area is too small to really numb so he had to just stitch it up without giving me anything beforehand. He assured me that it would feel like a bee sting, but I beg to differ. I have been stung multiple times since coming to Kentucky as the house we're working on currently is basically a breeding ground for waspers and I can assure you that getting your eyelid stitched back together hurts significantly more than getting stung. Thankfully, it was only two stitches and I was sent on my way with some antibiotic ointment and these words of wisdom: "Bethanie, when they tell you to keep your eye on the power tools; they don't mean it literally".

Today, I woke up to a much more purple looking eye than in the above photo and a sense of appreciation for the fact that this could have been a much more tragic story ending in me now having one glass eye. So all in all, I really must say as terrible as this story sounds I'm just thankful that I still have both my eyes, I'm not sporting a bald spot on the front of my head, and I will now look pretty stinkin' rugged for Thanksgiving. 

The morning after









Ain't No Sunshine

I miss the sun.

I used to take for granted the fact that I would get to see the sun and feel its rays every day from the time it rose in the morning until it went down in the evening. Yes, I knew that some days would be cloudy or rainy and that I would be deprived of my Vitamin D for the day. I understood that in the winter the days would become shorter and my time with the sun would be even more restricted.

The 2nd hill

I did NOT realize that my time with the sun could be reduced to a mere 4 hours a day. But that is what my life has come to. Our participant's house faces a huge hill and we work in its shadow all morning until about 12:30 and if we are on the driveway side of the house you are then blessed with sunshine until about 3:30 when it starts disappearing behind another hill. I literally watch the sun creep up over the tree line every morning and then watch the sunshine reflected higher up on the hill that the house sits on and wish its warmth down towards me. Today, we were working on the side of the house that never sees the sun and therefore I didn't feel the sunshine until we stopped work for lunch. But from what I understand, this sun deprivation is slightly normal for people around here. I guess its just something I'll have to get used to.

Another difference I've seen firsthand recently between Kentucky and the North East is the abundance and use of railroad crossings. At home, I would see crossings occasionally but I don't think that I've actually seen a train go by and I've certainly never been stuck waiting at a crossing before. But here, we see trains all the time piled high with coal criss-crossing all over the curvy mountain roads we drive on to and from our work sites. The other day we got stuck waiting at least 10 minutes for a train to pass before we could continue on our journey.

I can't say that I really dislike the excuse to sit and just enjoy ten minutes to relax and wind down from the busyness of the day. People move slower here. Here you take the time to talk and more importantly listen to one another and not just rush through life at breakneck speed. While living on Kentucky time, its perfectly socially acceptable for me to show up somewhere 10 minutes late and say I got stuck behind the coal truck and no one will question it or be upset.

Is a little more sunshine while I learn how to wait too much to ask?

Scaffolding, Siding, and Near Death Experiences

After I posted my last blog, I realized that it has been quite a while (at least a month) since I have dedicated a post to my actual job with CAP - working in Housing. By the time I get through detailing all my weekend adventures in a blog, I am just too tired to add on anything about what I did at work that week. Therefore, this post is dedicated to an update on the work side of my adventures with CAP.

To bring everyone up to update on what I've been doing, first, I suppose I should give a little back story about the house we have been working on. It is located at the end of a holler way out in Knott County and is owned by an older couple who live alone there. It is a small box house which as I can best explain it means that this house was never framed out with studs and whatnot. Instead it is a big box with planks nailed to the frame for the walls with drywall added on the inside and wood siding on the outside. As you can imagine, this does not make for the best insulation situation. In fact, working on this house, we've seen that the house was mainly insulated with newspapers and cloth. We even found a newspaper from the 1920s!

The list of repairs being done by CAP for this house include:

• New vinly siding
• Interior painted
• Drywall on ceiling patched
• All new windows and door
• New kitchen cupboards and sink
• Bathroom repairs including new toilet
• New front porch steps

We started working on this house in the beginning of October and we were lucky to have two very skilled volunteer groups come down and help us for two weeks. Between the group's work and the time my crew has spent working we have been able to replace all the windows, install the new front door, install the new cupboards, counter top, and sink, build the new front steps, and paint 3 of the rooms inside. I don't have any before pictures unfortunately, but I can share some photos of the repairs we have done so far.

New cupboards before we put on the counter top and sink

Kate putting together the new porch stairs



Me putting up Tyvek paper



The past week and a half or so we have been working on putting up vinyl siding on the exterior of the house. It has been quite a process because as it is with most of our houses nothing is plumb or level and things never work out quite the way you think they should. Another fun part about this house is its particular location on the hillside. The best way I can describe it is to say you can walk out of the back door into their yard, but in the front there is a walk-out basement with a 9 ft high porch above it. I have become quite good at setting up, taking down, and using scaffolding over the past few weeks. It can get really tricky trying to get the ladders out of the way of your work and getting the ladder jacks set up evenly so your plank isn't wobbly, but it does keep you on your toes. It can be quite terrifying when you first walk out onto the plank and know that one misstep and you could fall 20 feet straight down onto the ground. But as I've been told numerous times, its not the fall you need to be concerned about, its the landing.



Me, Jess, and Heather before I almost fell to my death.



There have been numerous times that I have been on the scaffolding and lost my balance for a second and scared myself a little, but never honestly came close to falling. Until yesterday. I legitimately saw my life flash before my eyes yesterday. I was standing on the edge of a piece of scaffold trying to get up a rather difficult piece of Soffit which also happened to be the last piece we were putting up for the day. Jess (Kate's sister who came to visit with her best friend Heather) was up on the scaffolding with me and was standing in the middle handing me pieces. (The picture I put in may help you picture this story a little better. I was standing on the very end of the scaffold towards the left of this photo.) We finished getting up the Soffit and then Tony came up on the ladder to check out what our next step would be and decided to call it a day. Jess decided to step off the scaffold and onto the porch rail which was in front of us rather than climbing down the ladder 20 ft or so. When she said she was going to step off the scaffold, I didn't even think anything about it, until I felt the scaffold falling beneath me. Simple physics had taken over. Without Jess in the middle, the edge of scaffold that was extended several feet by the jacks started working like a seesaw and went down towards the ground. Only problem was the ground was at least 20 feet below me. Luckily, Jess immediately realized what was happening and stepped back on the scaffold and I grabbed onto the ladder and was no worse for the wear except for the fact that I think I lost a good 5 years off my life.

Just another day at the work site.

One Last Hurrah

I don't think I've ever been so excited about the prospect of a weekend of absolute nothing-ness. This past weekend marked the 7th one in a row that I have had something going on (you can read the details of all these lovely weekends in my previous posts, if you haven't already).

However, I must say I couldn't have thought of a better way to end the busyness but with this latest adventure - a trip to St. Louis to play trampoline dodgeball for a fellow camp counselor Kristen's birthday party.

I don't think there is any way to really describe trampoline dodgeball accurately. What I had imagined in my mind prior to actually experiencing it was pretty far removed from the actual event. If you want to see what it looks like when professionals play, you can check out this video: The professionals. Our version involved a lot less flipping and cheesy music, but was played on the same type of court and was equally AMAZING.

We had the court for an hour and it flew by. I really think I could've jumped for at least another two hours. It definitely took some adjusting to as I learned after I fell directly following my first jump. But once you got the hang of jumping between the squares and established some sense of balance, it became a lot easier to avoid many more embarrassing spills. I even got up the nerve to do a couple flips by the end of the hour.



Our Dodgeball Crew

In addition to playing trampoline dodgeball, we were also able to visit the St. Louis Zoo which was highly entertaining and even more exciting it was FREE. I can honestly say I don't remember the last time I went to the zoo, but the St. Louis Zoo did not disappoint. And when one of your fellow zoo-goers happens to be a Zoology teacher it makes for a much more educational experience. Including her pointing out this sign entitled 'What's So Special About a Hippo's Hiney?' which detailed how hippos help feed the fish with, well, I guess the picture can explain for me.

Please note the word bubble in the bottom right hand corner.

As much fun as the past month and a half has been, I am so glad that it is over and I can now look forward to some down time until Thanksgiving when the craziness begins all over again.

Halloweekend Festivities

Another ridiculously busy weekend has passed us by in the Floyd House:Halloween Weekend AKA Halloweekend.The highlight of the weekend was that Kate and I finally were able to reveal our costume on Saturday at the Halloween party. We have been planning this costume since the first week we met each other back in August so there was a lot of pressure to perform.

*Insert Drum Roll Please*

We dressed up as our crew leader, Tony, and his wife, Liz!



Tony, Kate as Tony, Liz, Me as Liz





The costume was a huge hit with everybody at the party and a lot of people kept confusing the look-a-like Tony for the real Tony. I wish I had a picture of Tony's reaction when he walked into the party. He was completely dumbfounded - it was great! I can imagine it would be odd to walk into a party and see an exact copy of yourself waiting to greet you. The night was even made better by the fact, that Kate and I had a clean sweep of the contests that night. She won 'Best Costume' and I ended up winning the pumpkin carving contest with my creation to the right.

In recognition of Halloween, I'd thought I'd also share a little story about an encounter I had with some wildlife last week at work. I was working underneath the porch of the house tacking up a wire with these little plastic clips to keep it from interfering with the Tyvek paper we were wrapping the house with. For this story to make sense, I have to explain the space where I was working. The front porch on this house is 9 feet high so the space underneath it is quite spacious and is actually mostly a concrete slab that butts up against the basement of their house. While you are standing underneath it you can see all the boards from the deck above and the joists that are holding it together. So I am standing on my ladder tacking up this wire and just moving right along with hardly any problems. I notice in a gap between some boards (that are maybe 6 inches from my face) a piece of what looks like fuzz which I account to the fact that this house was previously insulated with old newspapers and pieces of cloth. However, upon closer inspection, I realize it is NOT a piece of fuzz, but rather some sort of dead animal - a mouse to be exact. Its hanging upside down and all that is sticking out is its head. I can see its eyes which are closed and its face, but that's it. I called up to Tony and Kate, who were installing a door on the porch, and informed them of my discovery, but assured them I was fine. I decided to lean in for a closer look and when I was about two inches away, all of a sudden its' eyes popped open and it looked directly at me. I let out the loudest, girliest scream and jumped down from the ladder as quickly as I could.

Not only was it NOT a piece of fuzz, it was an animal, and NOT a dead one, but a LIVE one, and NOT a mouse, but a bat.



The bat's face
(My exact view when it opened its eyes)







The bat's butt
(View from on top of the porch)



Needless to say, Tony and Kate came down to check on me (really just make fun of me for being a baby) and after we all stared at it for a while and took some photos we were back to work none the worse for the wear.

Except for the fact that I am still trying to live this moment down.

Not So Broken #2

Some more photos off my camera to hold you over until my next blog post which is currently in the works. Hopefully, I'll get it posted soon. Maybe even tonight depending on my motivation level and how tired I become in the next hour or so.