Week 20

One nail in every square foot of the floor? Gladly...

The countdown to Winter Break is at an end as my bags lay packed at the foot of my bed on this the eve of my departure for home. I’ll be coming back to Vicksburg in a couple of weeks, but this break marks the halfway point in my 10-month journey. So far, it’s been pretty life altering…in a good way.

Last week was extremely bitter sweet as I finished my last week of work with PNOLA and left New Orleans, which had become my temporary home. The people I met there were kind and unique, and I’m grateful for the 2 months I got to live amongst them.

Monday through Thursday was spent sheet rocking a second house with a new group of volunteers. This time I knew what I was doing, and everything went smoothly. We got a good amount of the place finished before leaving town, and it was nice to leave on a high note. PNOLA gave us a dinner send off party on Thursday evening, and then it was back to Vicksburg for debriefing and such on Friday.

Though we’ve been having chilly weather down here, it hadn’t quite felt like Christmas until this weekend. My team and I work a 10 ½ hour day doing Toys for Tots in Jackson on Saturday, and it was really great. I’ve never participated in any kind of toy drive or anything before, so this was completely new to me. I spent the day walking individuals around a giant room in a convention center, leading them to age/gender specific tables where they could choose 2 toys for each of their children. I’d put the toys in a garbage bag, walk them to the door and take the next parent waiting in line to start the process over again. It was a long day, and my feet hurt terribly by the end, but after that, I knew Christmas was on its way! On Sunday, some of the girls in a dorm just down from mine made sugar cookies, which they invited everyone to come and decorate. It was quite a festive party, and everyone had a good time.

Today was spent debriefing on our projects and in various other meetings, after which we had a big Holiday party dinner. We also cleaned our van and had a “mini project” where we went to a 12-acre cemetery built on hilly terrain and cleaned out a bunch of dead fallen trees and the like.

Now, to bed I must go, as I have a full day of Ameri-stuff tomorrow, followed by the long drive to Kentucky. Jacquie and I are renting a car for the occasion, and according to GoogleMaps, it should be about a 10 ½ hour drive, putting us in the driveway at about 5am.

May you all have a very Merry Christmas as I am planning to do, and I’ll let you know what’s happening in the New Year.

Crocheting event.

Week 19

PNOLA + Union College volunteers + Me, Ruth & John.

I can sheetrock!!! I’ve wanted to learn for a while now, and at long last, I know how. It all started on Monday…

PNOLA had a volunteer group from a college in New York come and work this week (the project is part of a Sociology class they’re taking), and first thing Monday, we began sheetrocking a house that was nothing more than a room full of studs. When sheetrocking, it seems that you work from top to bottom, therefore, the first day we worked on ceilings. It was pretty brutal from the get go.  Have you ever worked in a group with two other people, none of you having done a particular task, which requires two of you to lift and hold 54 lbs of cement over your head until the third person drills at least 4 screws into strategic places across the board (Lord only knows where these places are), making sure to hit a stud and sink the screw exactly flush with the board in question? It’s not a party, I can tell you. There weren’t even that many things to stand on that would greatly increase your height, so a lot of this was done while standing atop a plastic crate on tip toes to reach. The guy on my crew that was sinking the screws never really caught onto the delicate balance that must be maintained in this process, and much of the day went like this:

Me: “Hey, this is super heavy. Just put a few in.”

Screw guy: “I know. Sorry. Where should it go? Oh wait, this is the perfect spot. Does anyone have a screw?”

Me: “There’s some in my pocket. Hurry up!!”

Screw guy: “Sorry. Sorry. Hold on.”

Get’s a screw out of my pocket and carefully positions it.

Me (In a pained voice): “There’s no stud there, man.”

Screw guy: “What? What’d you say?”

Me (Impatiently): “There’s no board underneath.  Find a spot with a board underneath.”

Screw guy: “Oh crap, sorry. Oh man, I forgot.”

Me: “It’s cool, but seriously, hurry up. We’re dying here.”

Other girl holding board begins to whimper.

Screw guy: “Okay, right. Sorry. Okay, here we go. Just a second.”

Positions screw, inserts drill, pulls the pressure trigger down all the way. Screw goes flying.

Screw guy: “Oh man. Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh…”

Me (yelling): “Grab another screw!”

Screw guy: “Right, yeah. Does anyone have a screw?”

Me (slightly hysterical): “My pocket!!”

Screw guy: “Right. Oh yeah. Oh crap. Sorry. Sorry.”

My will to live begins to fade, as my arms begin to tremble under the weight of the cement and it feels as if I’ve been holding it forever. Like Frodo Baggins in Mordor, I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass.

Screw guy: “Okay, this time I got it.”

Pulls trigger all the way, screw goes flying.

Screw guy: “Oh man. Oh geez. I’m so sorry. Crap! Why does it keep doing that??”

Me (almost completely defeated): “Just pull the trigger lightly. Hurry up. Take a couple screws this time.”

Nothing exists accept the pain. The girl next to me is almost crying.

Screw guy: “Okay, almost there. Hold on.”

He takes my advice about the trigger and finally sinks a screw, albeit sinking it through the 

paper that holds the cement board intact, thus rendering the feat almost useless.

And that was ceilings. Screw guy never really caught on, making each piece agony. Also, it didn't help that when the other girl gave measurements for cutting pieces, she couldn't read a tape measure, and kept saying things like, "it's 56 and 3/4 inches and 3 marks." When you look around the house, there are still various walls with penciled measurements formatted exactly like this, and everyones says, "that must have been Kari's group." You have to pick your battles sometimes. My little group did get quite a bit of sheetrock up though, and finally graduated to walls, which were cake in comparison.

Have you ever heard of a RotoZip? I hadn’t before this week when one of them turned harmless sheetrock into supremely evil dust, which filled my eyes, my throat, and my lungs. I took off work on Friday because I couldn’t get out of bed, and I didn’t eat anything but pretzels for a couple of days because the dust made me feel so nauseous and drainage-y.

The house I’m working on, as well as another house that other members of my team are working on, are being funded by two Saint’s football players, Roman Harper and Darren Sharper, and yesterday we had to work on what would normally be our day off, because the players were coming by the houses. I got to meet Darren, who was there for just a couple of minutes, but there was a whole big to-do at the other house, and players and news people were there for hours. It was really good publicity for PNOLA, which is cool, because they are a small, not very well known organization, but they’re doing a lot of good in the community. Check them out if you get a chance: pnola.org.

Besides sheetrocking, I also learned how to mud and put up corner bead. It was a pretty cool week, and I’m excited to put my new skills into practice.

For entertainment this week, Ruth, Cain, Taylor, and I went to Rock ‘n’ Bowl with the volunteer group we worked with, who are really cool. The place itself was fun too, because it’s a live music dance place with bowling on one end. I danced. I bowled. I had a great time.

Lastly, my team found out where we’re going on our next project. It’s going to be a split round, which is exactly what it sounds like. Half of our time will be spend in Charlottesville, VA at a nature conservancy. The other half will be in Hattiesburg, MS, where we will be restoring a historical building. Pretty exciting stuff! But first, Christmas! 5 more days in NOLA, then back to Vicksburg for debriefing, and home in 10 days!!

Ho, ho, ho!

 k

Week 18

The mathmatics of digging holes...

I laughed. I bled. I concentrated. I was bored. I failed. I succeeded. This week involved a little bit of a lot of things. Now it’s Sunday, and sitting here with my mug of coffee, listening to music as I reflect on the week’s events, I find that it was a pretty productive one. Funny how when there’s a lot of work to do, you don’t always feel like you’re getting much done while you’re doing it, yet upon reflection, you wonder how you accomplished so much.

Indoor framing was the highlight of my week, because I learned a ton of new stuff, and I now feel pretty confident to create a doorway, or a window, or a wall where something else existed before. When it comes to learning this sort of thing, I ask a million questions so that I can feel comfortable to do the task alone if I have to at some point down the road. My supervisor Chris is super patient and answers all my questions and then some. I’m learning so much from him.

Next on my list was putting up vinyl siding. This is kind of funny, because Mom and Dad just had their new house encased in this stuff, and when I was home over Thanksgiving we had a lot of questions about sealing this type of siding. Now I have the answers, but it’s a week too late! Having now cut and applied vinyl siding, I have only one thing to say about it: it’s evil!!! Granted, it probably wouldn’t have been too much trouble were we allowed to use a chop saw to cut the pieces, but for whatever unknown reason, we were given metal snips and told to proceed. My hands are a mess from the cuts on top of cuts that snips on siding produce. Disgustingly, there still remain some bloody thumbprints that bear witness to my work there that day.

My other two hand injuries came about as I prepared old studs for sheetrock, which we’ll be putting up next week. Having gotten a sturdy grip on a tricky shim that was sticking out too far, I yanked with more force than was required and caught the side of my pinky on an old, rusty nail sticking out from the wall. Thankfully, they gave us tetanus shots before we left campus, but it still hurt, and I ended up bleeding on some other stuff. I’m pretty sure that at this point, there’s a trail of my blood all around New Orleans that you could follow to get to each of our work sites. My last injury occurred as I was helping my supervisor put up wood soffit that had been pulled down to install new electrical wires. The last piece was tricky to wedge in place, and not having a hammer on me, I accepted a tomahawk type tool  - not quite a hammer, not quite a hatchet – and began to hit the soffit above my head with the square hammer end, all the time staring at the hatchet aimed at my face. So concerned was I that I might accidentally split my face open (the tool was quite heavy), I neglected to take proper aim at the soffit and ended up smashing my left index finger from nail to closest joint. Blood, bruising, throbbing. Fortunately, none of the injuries of the week were serious, just uncomfortable, so no worries.

I was rewarded on Friday when I got to nail down all of the OSB for the floors in a big house we’re working on. Give me a nail gun and a task that involves almost nonstop shooting, and I’m a happy camper. After I finished, I moved onto cutting cement board for the floors that are going to be tiled, and let’s just say it’s not nearly as enjoyable as shooting nails into things. The cutting itself isn’t bad, it’s the mask you have to wear so you don’t get cancer that’s really terrible. Never before have I had so little circulation in my face. Not the most pleasant sensation, I can tell you. By the way, the house where this work is being done is being funded by Saint’s football players, which is kind of neat.

Saturday was our big POL event for the round. In case you don’t remember, POL stands for Project Outreach Liason, which is my specialty roll on the team. Ashlyn (my partner in POL crime) and I have to plan one community event in each place we serve. Last round we built birdhouses with high school kids. This time we did a crocheting event in the New Orleans Museum of Art Sculpture Garden. We called it ‘Crochet for a Cause’, and the goal was to get people to come crochet hats with us that we could donate to a local homeless shelter. It was unsuccessful in that our team and Jacquie’s two brothers who are in town for a visit were the only ones crocheting, but we did have a lot of people who were walking by ask us about the project and encourage us in what we were doing. The whole point of the event was to bring awareness to the fact that even though the city is being rebuilt, there are more homeless than ever, and they still need help. So by speaking about why we were doing what we were doing, I suppose we could call our event successful even if we didn’t achieve exactly what we meant to.

This morning I’m going over to work at the Sculpture Garden, but first, I have more crocheting to do! Yesterday I made three hats, and I’ve already got another one started. I intend to Crochet for a Cause!!

Weeks 16 & 17

Mac insisted that I throw mulch at him
for a picture idea he had...

As the creaky flatbed slowly made its way down the narrow street, my hope of ending the day with a light workload turned to incredulity at the sheer volume of sheetrock my eyes had focused on, which then turned to despair when the notion set in that I would be carrying each piece into the house. Friday afternoon, 10 people, 37,000 lbs of oversized sheetrock going into a house with stairs. The task seemed impossible as I stared at the two massive piles of 150 lb floppy, easy to damage white boards, but like most things, a difficult task does not automatically translate into an impossible task; what must be done can be done.

Once of the three benches my KaBoom group built.

So heavy awkward piece by heavy awkward piece, our strained and tired bodies carried every single board into the house. I’ll tell you what, there was quite a sense of accomplishment that came along with the muscle strain, but humbleness was in the mix as well. There are many things you simply couldn’t do without a team of folks to back you up, and even then, it’s not always easy.

They make Build Captains wear
pretty ridiculous garb.

Another KaBoom build was in line for us the day after “the sheetrock incident”, and since we had to be up by 5:30am for that, everyone fell into bed pretty early. Ashlyn, Ruth and I decided to walk to Café du Monde for coffee and beignets before bed since I was leaving after KaBoom the next day and heading home for Thanksgiving. This turned into a frightening experience when we heard nearby gunshots just after leaving the house. Being a small town girl, I assumed the sound was issued by fireworks of sorts, and turned around to look. When I turned back a second or two later, Ashlyn and Ruth had already run halfway down the street. Needless to say, I’m still alive and have learned that when in doubt about loud noises, assume gunfire.

My trip home was great and I got to spend quite a bit of time with my family since I got to be there for a little more than a week. Mom and Dad’s house is nearing completion and I got to help them do some finish work, so that was kind of fun. I even got to see some snow while I was home, so it was a well rounded visit. The babies are getting so big, but I’d recognize them anywhere. They’ve got an Evelyness about them that cannot be overlooked.

Well, I’ve only got 2 ½ weeks left in NOLA and it still feels like I just got here. The only thing that marks the passing of time is the Christmas music that has begun to play all around me.

Where we're from.