Day 1 of Week 1 of Volunteers

Today has been the craziest day of my entire life. And it's not even over, so who even knows what will happen next. My morning started with waking up at 6:30, moving scaffolding from one truck to another van, and then driving about 25 minutes to the lumber store. Luckily, they had everything on my list (Jen also went on a hardware run, but to a different store), but when he was loading the lathing boards (1x4s) he asked if rough cut lumber would be okay, and I wasn't really sure so I just said yes... I got back to the center and was immediately approached by the cantaloupe man. Before I had even stepped out of Jonah (our hoss cargo van) he was giving me his spiel about why we should buy his cantaloupes. So after listening for quite a while, I escaped to get Jacob (our operations coordinator- who deals with the food). I probably should have just told the cantaloupe man no from the beginning, but it was so hilarious and random that I just couldn't resist. It probably was a good business strategy trying to sell his lovely fruit to all of these people, but we just don't have room in the budget. Once I got back into our staff office I was informed of our kitchen fiasco- apparently all of the electrical outlets except one stopped working, and the water cut off at the same time. We had the water cut off several times last week, and even though Doug (our facility manager) had shown us how to fix it- flicking the pump in the basement, we decided that it needed to be replaced. Miraculously, everything seems to be working now, but we are under a severe thunderstorm watch. So I quickly discovered that we needed the finished lathing strips, not rough cut, so Julie (our liason who is here for a few days) went back to Potter's Lumber to return it. We loaded up all of the vans and sent them through border patrol, run by Jacob. Last night at the staff meeting, we had planned on Torey bringing the scaffolding out to one of our houses- "Such Great Heights" (we use a code name for all of the houses we work on in order to be sensitive to the community). But he wasn't feeling well so I volunteered to drive it out. This house has the steepest/bumpiest driveway I have ever seen. really. Anyone in my family, imagine the Miller's driveway and multiply it by 100. Last week we had been able to make it up the driveway, but with all the rain it had washed out and was impossible to drive up. So I got to the bottom of the driveway and parked, a little curious as to where the volunteers were since they had left the center a good 15 minutes before I had. So I hiked up the hill, and went to hang out with the family, unfortunately in the process I fell and ripped my jeans and twisted my ankle :( But I'll be okay, don't worry :) The volunteers finally arrived about 30 or 45 minutes later, and after unloading the scaffolding, I headed back to the center. Unfortunately there were more problems with the water, like sinks not turning off, etc. But around 11:30 we were finally able to start runs. We have two visitors staying for a few days, Julie, like I mentioned before, and Brad, our chaplain. Red, our construction consultant, also rides along on runs every Monday, so the 7 of us had to figure out who was going where. I ended up getting separated from my runs group, so I went and did our grocery shopping and now I'm just hanging out at the center, debating if I should shower or take a nap.