Good Work

When my family lived in Minnesota, we did a few builds with Habitat for Humanity with a group from our church. There were January builds with roofing and siding work that we did in the freezing cold.

"Oh good!" we said when our church got involved in Habitat here in Seattle, "no more freezing cold builds, no more snow at the work site."

Yeah. Shouldn't have said it out loud.
Seattle has these funky convergence zones that are caused by the mountains and the water and the funky micro climates, I guess. Sometimes there will just be wild weather in one part of town and nothing anywhere else. So as we drove up to the work site from our house, there were a few flurries, then a few more. Pretty soon the snow was blizzard-like and accumulating fast--right over our home site!But it didn't matter. We had fun anyway. I was so happy that I got to work with my good friend (and our Associate DRE) we didn't even plan it, just happened to sign up to work on the same day. It was nice to work with someone I enjoy lots.

My husband got picked for more skilled work which made him feel great, and they let him work alone which he also appreciates.

After a really nice lunch served by some folks from a local church I wound up with a group of women tearing down some of the wooden supports that go up as they build the real walls. We had hammers and crow bars and all was going really well until we hit this monster 2x12 plank that was nailed to another one. The wood was swollen from the rain and snow, and it was really stuck together. My friend said "wouldn't it suck if we had to get a guy to get these apart?" Well, bring on the determination of Queen Esther and all the force behind International Women's Day--there was no way we were calling in a guy.

We took turns, and used all our tricks, and yep, got the stupid boards apart--pulling one nail right through the board! Ha. And it was the one of us who is 4'11" (that's not me!) who did the final puuuullllll.

Good stuff. Good fun. Good work.

It's a good life.