Misty Fog

When you hear the color name 'Misty Fog' what exactly comes to mind? I personally think of the bluish gray color of the fog as it surrounds the mountains most mornings here in Kentucky. I do NOT think of the gosh awful color yellow that I have spent the last week or so covering a house in. In my personal opinion, they would have done a much more accurate naming if they had titled it 'Jersey Smog'.



This face says it all. No more paint!



Unfortunately for me, I have had to spend an abundance of time with Misty Fog/Jersey Smog as Kate and I have been painting with it for what feels like a lifetime. The past two weeks or so, up until the end of the day on Wednesday, all the housing crews have been working on one house which isn't a common occurrence at all. The reason for the exception is that the participant at this particular house passed away recently and to keep from complicating our funding the job needed to be completed very quickly. Having all three crew leaders plus up to seven volunteers working together in a small space, not to mention the participant's two adult sons and their respective girlfriends, is what some would refer to as interesting. However, since I despise the use of the word interesting because it is a simply a placeholder for the real word you want to say but are afraid to, I would say it is exhausting, trying at times, and highly entertaining at random moments spread throughout the day. To spare you all the mundane details, all I will say is that fourteen people with their own ideas, ways of doing things, preferences, opinions, personalities, quirks, and pet peeves are bound to clash on certain points and sometimes we as volunteers get stuck in the middle trying to decide who to listen to.



Part of the old ceiling



But despite all of that, we were able to complete our portion of the job and Tony, Kate, and I were happily back at our participant's home Thursday. And we were NOT painting which made for a much more enjoyable day. Instead Kate and I got to tear down a portion of an old bathroom ceiling which was falling down and replace it with some new drywall. Tearing it down was quite an adventure. We got down the drywall without incident or injury, but then underneath that we found a layer of sagging wallpaper waiting for us. I made just two small cuts in one corner and with one little tug the entire four by seven foot section came crashing down surrounding us in a cloud of foul smelling dust and debris. (Don't worry, I was wearing both safety goggles and a mask.) Underneath the wallpaper, we found the actual ceiling which was made of long planks of old wood which was in good enough shape to be left after we threw in a couple extra screws to hold in a couple loose pieces.



My wasp kill count



Unfortunately, in the process of putting in those couple extra screws we displaced some red waspers who were not happy with us at all. We put the new drywall up but before we had a chance to mud the cracks shut, angry red wasps started to sneak out of the ceiling and fly around looking to exact revenge on whoever had disturbed their home. After killing a few with some well placed hammer hits, I had no choice but to break out the wasp spray and bring an end to the madness. Over the course of the afternoon, I managed to stem the flow of wasps to nothing and for once without incurring an injury to myself.

Bethanie - 1

Red Waspers - 0

After we got the new piece of drywall up, Kate and I had to go and mud over the cracks and corners. The mud comes in a large 5 gallon bucket that needs to be stirred upon opening. Luckily, we have an attachment for our drill that we use to stir the mud which saves us a lot of hassle. Unfortunately, the bucket we had was brand new and therefore it was really stiff and hard to stir. Kate and I drained two batteries on our biggest drill and then we turned to Tony for some help. Tony sent me to the trailer for some supplies and two burnt out drills later we finally had the mud mixed up. Yup, that's right, we literally killed two corded drills mixing up drywall mud  The best part was the fact that as smoke was pouring out of the drill Tony continued to use the mixer. The bathroom was full of a hazy fog, thankfully not the color of the dreaded Misty Fog, for a while and it smelt terrible, but we were able to finish the ceiling.

The second drill we killed.

Although our week was really long and I am glad to see it go, it was balanced out slightly by the fact that I conquered a new recipe - my grandma's Italian Wedding Soup. I was cooking this week for the house and was completely out of ideas as to something I could make that we haven't already had. In my family, we celebrate every holiday with way too much food and one of the dishes on the menu is my grandma's soup which is always a big hit. I called her to get the recipe and she walked me through how she makes it from the type of pasta she uses to how she makes the meatballs. Although no one from my family was here to tell me if it compared to grandma's, my housemates really liked the soup and from what I can remember it seemed to at least look right. In fact, one of my housemates asked for the recipe, I told her I'd have to check with my family back home to make sure it was okay.

So family members, lets vote. To share or not to share?

Not So Broken #3

Smashed Fingers

Its another lovely snowy morning in Kentucky and I once again find myself sitting at the Floyd House kitchen table waiting along with Kate to see if and when we will be making our way into work. Our manager has already called to let us know that we have at least a couple hours until we could potentially be allowed to leave for work so the two of us have decided to use this unexpected free time to post on our respective blogs. (Kate blogs for CAP's website and her posts can be found HERE.)

In light of my last week at work, I have decided that it is high time that I dedicate a post to my uncanny ability to incur some sort of injury every day of work. Most of these injuries are self-inflicted and due to the unfortunate combination of my clumsiness and a construction site.

*Before I continue on with this blog post, I feel I should throw a little disclaimer out there for my poor parents who already worry incessantly about me especially after the dremel incident. Have no fear Pete and Sue, the injuries I am about to describe are not nearly as terrible or life-threatening as you may be imagining and I have yet to require another trip to our lovely local hospital.*

To help you all understand the type of injuries I am referring to, I am going to walk you through just one of my days last week. On Monday, I managed to smash and bruise both my left pinky finger and thumb with a hammer, put my foot through a rotted out bedroom floor, crush the middle finger on my left hand with a flat bar, and somehow I found a way to bruise behind my right arm above my elbow (I still am dumbfounded as to how I accomplished this). This all happened in just ONE day so you can imagine the number and extent of the injuries I accumulate over the course of a week or a month or a year of volunteering. I am both excited for and saddened by the thought of the day when I am not constantly sporting an array of cuts, scrapes, and bruises that set me apart as a clumsy housing volunteer.

While we're on the topic of self-inflicted injuries, I thought I might as well briefly describe a different source of self-inflicted pain I recently brought upon myself. This past Saturday Kate and I went on an adventure to Pikeville to find Southern Steel Tattoos and Body Piercing. It is a sort of tradition among a good portion of CAP volunteers to mark their time in Kentucky with a tattoo. Since I want to get the most out of my time at CAP, I felt I couldn't miss out on this rite of passage. However, there is nothing that I am ready to permanently ink into my skin so instead I decided to get a new piercing - an industrial. I figure if I can withstand getting stitches in my eyelid without any medication then I can handle getting two holes pierced in my cartilage. As I was sitting waiting anxiously for the piercing to commence, the piercer asked me how I was feeling and if I was nervous. I told her that I was a little nervous mainly because I couldn't remember how bad piercings hurt as its been a little while since I got one. Her response was "Oh, this one hurts pretty good; you'll remember it for awhile". Let me tell you, she wasn't lying. Right now the bar in between the two piercings is a strange sort of curved plastic piece as you can see above, but in 4-6 weeks once it heals I'm going to replace it with a stainless steel one.

Despite my never-ending stream of injuries, both work and non-work related, life in Kentucky is still good. I know that the work I do here, exhausting as it can be, is important and its making a difference - one smashed finger at a time.  

You're Grounded

I can't remember the last time I heard those words but it happened today and from the way things are looking I won't be surprised if I get some more phone calls in the next months that end in "You're grounded".

Have no fear, I am not getting in trouble in Kentucky. Well, let me rephrase, I am not getting in enough trouble to warrant being sent to my room indefinitely. In CAP life, being grounded refers to the fact that we are not allowed to drive company vehicles due to inclement weather which in turn means we can't go to work. 

Snow in Eastern Kentucky completely paralyzes people and the schools here are one of the best examples of that. Although it only really snowed yesterday afternoon into today, entire counties have been out of school all week just because of the threat of potential snowfall. Last year some counties ended up with so many snow days that the kids were still in school in the middle of summer. There is good reasons for the seemingly over-zealous cancellations. Here school buses have to travel up back hollers and windy mountain roads in order to pick up their pupils, and as you can imagine, ice and snow doesn't make that easy. So in order to avoid any buses getting stuck or worse being involved in an accident, counties shut down when snow starts to fall or the slightest threat of foul weather is heard.

As far as work cancellations go, we tend to follow the school system, but not all the time. It depends on your manager, where your work site is, how much snow we get, if our steep driveway got plowed, etc.

Sound confusing? That's because it is.

Since I've had a lot of practice figuring out the system this week, I think that I have it down to a science. And this is how it usually unrolls:

1. School gets cancelled the night before.
2. I go to bed knowing I will be delayed until my manger calls in the morning with a plan.
2. I get up the next morning around the usual time; 15 or 20 minutes later if I'm being a bum.
3. I get dressed for work.
4. I go and sit at the kitchen table for an unspecified amount of time waiting for a phone call.
5. I make Kate play card games or Guitar Hero with me to make the time pass.
6. I get a phone call telling me to either get myself into work or to go back to bed.
7. I do whatever I was told to do in #6.

But in typical CAP style, things are always changing and we are forced to be flexible and willing to work with the constant changes. Once I thought I had this whole snow day business figured out, my manager decided to call the house tonight and tell us that tomorrow unless it snows overnight that we are to show up at the office at the normal time. So I guess I have to add an eighth point to this list.

8. Forget steps 1-7 and any sort of system you have in place and just go with whatever we tell you at the moment because this is CAP and its going to change in 5 minutes anyway.

The Final Fifty-Eight

327 days.

That is all the time I have left as of today to complete my 101 list which I started on March 1st of 2009 - almost two years ago. I can't believe it has been so long since I started this quest of sorts to sit down and write out 101 goals for myself and then to try and meet each and every one of them in 1001 days. I've been thinking about my list a lot lately because I've been feeling that I am way behind schedule. Turns out it wasn't just a feeling, I still have more than half of my list left undone. 

58 tasks undone.

That's a lot of things to be checked off the list before my end date on November 27th. In fact, because I am a little OCD and like to break down things into the tiniest details, that means I have to complete at least one task per week and throw in an extra one a couple weeks  in order to meet my goal. That seems unbelievably daunting at this point. The one thing I do have going for me is that seven of the remaining fifty-eight are things that I cannot cross of the list until the end date because they are ongoing tasks like #15 - establish and follow a consistent workout routine. But that also means I have to continue working on them until the end date so it really isn't an alleviated burden. I've already come to grips with the fact that some of the items on my list will not get done. I wrote this list at a completely different point in my life than where I am now and some things just don't apply anymore. However, I am still going to try to do as many as I can and leave the bare minimum undone which means I have my work cut out for me.


On a brighter note, I have recently (and not so recently) crossed a few things off the list that I can briefly update you all on.

• #3: Run a 5k in under 35 minutes.
• This is one of my more recent accomplishments, but it has been a long time in the making. I started running several years ago and have fallen in and out of the practice many times. When I first decided I was moving to Kentucky,I figured I wouldn't have a gym readily available to me like I did during college and I knew I needed to come up with an alternate plan. I am not ashamed to admit I am slightly addicted to working out as I cannot go more than a few days without it or I get really stressed and become not the most pleasant person to be around. And so I started running. I only had one rule for myself - never stop running until you reach your end point. I can run as slow as I want, but I refuse to stop and walk. Some days are better than others. Sometimes I feel like I have 50 pound weights tied to each foot and each stride I take is a struggle, and sometimes I feel like I'm flying and I don't want the run to end. However, regardless of how I feel I make myself run and this past Monday I ran my own personal 5k race around the loop near my house in 34 minutes and 28 seconds.

• #20: Go on a road trip.
• I've detailed in this blog many of my recent road trips, and really I should have crossed this one off the list quite some time ago as I think I have driven to Kentucky at least 3 times since this list's creation. But I am now officially crossing it off the list.

• #51: Visit 5 new states.
• Missouri, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, & Michigan. Ditto on what I said about the previous list item.

And now onto the final fifty-eight.

Its Not You, Its Me

I've debated for some time how to write this particular blog post. I always question how people will interpret the words I write and worry that they may take them the wrong way and perhaps be inadvertently hurt or insulted. But as I have been told, the whole point of this blog is for me to have a venue to share my experiences from my point of view with minimal editing and lots of honesty. So here it is: the honest truth.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains

unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

(Nelson Mandela)

I don't think there is a better way than that quote to express how I felt being back in the Northeast for a little over two weeks for Christmas break. This break was not only the longest amount of time I have spent away from CAP since I moved here, but it is also most likely the only time that I will be in Rhode Island during my time in Kentucky. It was great to be able to see my family, some of whom I haven't seen since June. I was also able to make up a trip to Rivier, my alma mater, and visit my best friend and some other close friends who are still in school or live in the area.

 My break as a whole was rather uneventful. Every day consisted mainly of hanging out at my house, visiting friends/family, at least an hour workout, and some type of arts and crafts project. I did get to show off my housing skills a little bit by helping a friend drywall their living room ceiling one Saturday morning, but other than that it was a welcome break from the type of work I do here in Kentucky.

 After about the first week of being back in the Northeast and spending time up at school and home, I came to a realization - as much as I love the people I left behind there I can't imagine myself living there now. It wasn't that I felt unwelcomed, I think it took me coming back and seeing things as I left them, a lot of them still unaffected by time that caused me to notice how much I have changed since I left. Its not that I have drastically changed who I am over the past five months in Kentucky and I am suddenly a whole new person with no connections to my past. I just feel like all the little changes I have been undergoing since I first moved away three and half years ago until now finally are coming together and I am becoming more and more my own person. Not only has my appearance changed (if you had asked me if I would be wearing a hoop in my nose three years ago, I would have been adamant that it would never happen), but my dreams, values, and priorities have also shifted ever so much. I can't even fathom the individual I would be today had I not decided to move to New Hampshire for college and consequently learned about CAP through Campus Ministry which brings me to where I am right now - sitting in my room in a volunteer house in Martin, KY serving the people of Appalachia.

 The reason I hesitate even now to hit the publish button on this post is that I know this topic of me separating myself from RI is tough for some people to swallow. When I'm home, I try to avoid the subject altogether and steer discussions neatly around the fact that I don't feel like I belong there anymore.

I find myself using the age old, 'its not you, its me' reasoning that always seems so cliché and leaves the 'you' in the story feeling gypped out of an explanation and oddly at fault, but I don't know how else to say it. It really isn't Rhode Island or my family and friends - who I wouldn't trade for anything in the world - that have brought me to the realization that I don't belong there anymore not that this means I know where somewhere else is yet.

It really is me. I am the one who has changed.

So please don't take this dose of honesty personally.


I promise; its not you, its me.