WE NEED VOLUNTEERS

If anyone can get together a group of 3 (must be 18 or older) to come down and volunteer please do so! We have five villages here in Mississippi and Louisiana and three of the five are very slow until March. So we really need volunteers for the winter months. You can register online on the pcusa website http://www.pcusa.org/pda/teams.htm.

It has not been as cold as it was at the beginning of the week. Two days ago I was digging stuff out of the storage trailer. I (of course) needed something from the very back. And (of course) there was no way to get to the very back. So I spent a good 40 minutes rearranging boxes so I could get back there. And then putting them all back so I could get out. I'm sure it would have been quite amusing to watch me. I did at one point drop a slightly heavy box on my head, but it didn't hit hard and I am rather hard-headed, so it wasn't too bad.

We are having many problems with Sams. The direct deposits are not going through and they won't take our credit cards, so we are having to get everything from Wal-Mart for now. But our credit cards are about to be maxed out, so hopefully the Sams thing will be sorted out soon.

I spent most of this morning driving around. I went to the Salvation Army warehouse with Leslie to pick up some mold blaster and some kilz. (Kilz is a mold-retardent primer.) They gave us an entire palette of mold blaster (36 buckets that hold 3 gal. each) and five buckets of kilz (5 gal. each). I dropped Leslie off at camp and we took out a couple buckets to leave here. I took the rest of them to Pearlington, because a lot of the houses they are working in right now have mold. I got there about lunch time, so I went with Mike to the Methodist Church just down the street that serves hot lunches for volunteers every day. They had salad, potato salad, rice, green beans, mac & cheese, cornbread, catfish, garlic bread, and assorted desserts. It was pretty good.

Chris, Mary, Wilf, and Kyra come back from Houma tonight.

There is a wasp flying around in my window. It is making me very nervous.

Chilly Nights/Mornings

I went to the main office this morning to finish up the paperwork. It only took me about a half hour. So it wasn't bad at all. I went to Sam's and then took a bunch of receipts to Mary.

This afternoon I put all the letters and postcards and notes from the youth group up on the walls. There is hardly a blank space of wall anywhere. It's fabulous. Later this afternoon I went to one of the worksites to make sure they had everything they needed (because Don called and asked me to). I'll probably be doing some of that tomorrow since Don will be in Pascagoula and Henry will be in Pearlington. But we'll see.

We had hot dogs for dinner. More excitingly, we had delicious apple crisp for dessert! Steaming hot when we got it. Which really warmed us up.

Finally

The snow leopard puzzle is complete! Behold!









Yesterday Chris, Wilf, and Mary W. left for Houma (a village in Louisiana near New Orleans). They will be living there this week while they rebuild. They have a bunch of volunteers helping, so they are hoping to be done by Friday.

We had a staff meeting this morning. Then Ms. Sally (Our cook for the week. Three cheers for Ms. Sally!) and I went to the grocery store. We had lunch and then I headed over to the main office. I spent three hours there entering volunteer hours into DRD. I get to go back tomorrow to finish up. But it shouldn't take as long tomorrow. I'm almost done.

A little bit of a cold front came in. We have a frost warning for tonight. We also discovered that we are out of kerosine which is what we use in the heaters for the pods. We only have enough to run them tonight, but it's going to be cold all week. And apparently no one in Mississippi sells kerosine, so it has to be ordered from Louisiana. But we have a tank of diesel coming in tomorrow which is close enough to kerosine that we can use it to run the heaters.

Buddy is going to school to get a degree in oil refining. He has gotten a job/internship (I can't remember which) offer. He's pretty much been accepted for it, he just has to pass this special test that he's taking tomorrow. So he's been studying like crazy. I'm sure he'll do fine. He's been getting A's in all his classes and most of the tests he's taken he's gotten 90% or better. So he's worrying a little, but I have no doubt he'll ace it.

How To...

I have been sorting through paperwork again. People seem to have a very hard time following directions. We ask the volunteers to keep time sheets. We give them a How-to-Fill-Out-Time-Sheet paper with each time sheet. I had one group that wrote the hours for all four people in one line...on the how-to sheet, not the time sheet. Is is really that difficult? It seems pretty self explanatory to me. Particularly when it comes with instructions. Oh well.

All but one volunteer left today. We'll be getting some more tomorrow evening and then more on Sunday. We're going to have about 40 people here. So about the same as this week.

Buddy and I bought two new grills for the village because the two we have are rusted out and not usable. So now we have new ones.

We have made a lot of progress on the leopard puzzle. You can actually see the leopards now. : )

Pie, Catfish, and Prayer Shawls

I went to a house blessing in Pearlington. Whenever a house is finished, they have a house blessing and everyone is invited. The house belongs to an elderly couple. It had been flooded to the ceiling by the hurricanes, so it had been rebuilt nearly from scratch. It was a beautiful home. They opened with a prayer and then sang a song, read a scripture and prayed again. The volunteers who had worked on the house presented a prayer shawl to the woman. It was very nice.

This is the house blessing song:

Bless this house, O Lord we pray,
Make it safe by night and day...
Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out...
Bless the rood and Chimneys tall,
Let thy peace lie overall...
Bless this door that it may prove,
Ever open to joy and love...
Bless these windows shining bright,
Letting in God's Heavenly light,
Bless the hearth, the painting there,
With smoke ascending like a prayer!
Bless the folk who dwell within,
Keep them pure and free from sin...
Bless us all that we may be,
Fit O Lord to dwell with thee...
Bleus us all that one day we may dwell,
O Lord! With Thee!

And these are a couple pictures from it.
The man on the far right is one of the volunteers that worked on the house. The woman with the cane is the one that led the singing. The other two are the house owners.







This is Heather with the house owners. Heather (the Pearlington village manager) is on the far right.








These are the home owners. I never caught their names.










This is as much of the staff as could make it with the home owners. From left to right is Mary G. (financial manager), Henry (construction manager), Leslie (village coordinator), Jesse (Pearlington worksite manager), me (Orange Grove manager), Mike (the other Pearlington worksite manager), Heather, and Jane (was the Olive Tree manager, but will be going to Texas soon)




Chris and I were late to dinner, but we made it in time for dessert. Since there were only about 10 people here for dinner, the cooks had made it a little fancier. It was a candle (lamp) lit dinner. The made chicken tetrazzini and salad and cherry pie and some sort of custard pie. They brought it out in courses. As I said, we missed dinner, but desert was delicious! While we were there a couple of the volunteers came back and one of them had two pieces of fried catfish from Catfish Charlie's that they gave to Chris, so we shared those. Very good.

S'mores

This morning I went to the main office and Christi showed me how to enter volunteer hours into DRD. It isn't hard, but it is rather tedious. I started on it at about 9:30 and was there until almost 1:00. Then I went to Wal-Mart to get some stuff for tonight and Sam's to pick up an order. We got everything put away and then I had to go to Winn Dixie to get a couple more things they needed for tonight. When I got back I helped Wilf, Chris, and Buddy load pods into a moving truck. Wilf and Chris are going to take them to Houma. I think Chris said they'd go down to Houma Monday and stay there until it's rebuilt. I hope it doesn't take much more than a week. I will miss him. But that's okay. Anyway, I got pretty dirty doing that since the pods had been sitting on the ground and were all wet from being rained on. So after we finished I took a shower. Then I had to go to Winn Dixie again to get more stuff for dinner.

Christi sent me an email thanking me for doing the DRD stuff and saying I'd worked really hard and she cc'd it to Leslie and Henry. Leslie replied saying ditto. Which was very nice of them, since it's my job to do it.

Dinner was tacos. After dinner Chris got the fire going and a bunch of us sat out there and the volunteers made s'mores and everyone was telling stories and jokes and it was a lot of fun. I figured out how to turn on the heater in my trailer which will be very nice. And now it is bedtime.

Super Ball

This morning I placed a Sam's order, then went to Wal-Mart to get the things we needed for tonight. Then Buddy and I went to the main office to give Mary our receipts, gift cards, time sheets, etc. Then we went to Wal-Mart to get the rest of the things they needed for dinner. Then I went back to the office to work on paperwork. I have it all done and ready to enter into DRD (which is the computer data base that tracks volunteer hours and client information) tomorrow. Yay!

I hung out in my trailer for a little while. I made a bouncy ball with the kit mum sent me in my Halloween care package. I haven't checked to see if it's done, though it should be. I sewed my jacket where the seam had split. Easy Peasy.

Dinner was chicken casserole, peas, garlic bread, and salad. It was pretty good. After dinner I left to get my jacket. I came back for devotions, but didn't get to stay because the kitchen ladies called me away right before they started and kept asking me questions about what I'd bought and what was ordered and what they needed. I got to go listen to the last 30 seconds of devotions, but that was it.

Pasghetti

I slept in late. At 9:30 I got up because I was hungry. I brought back pie and ate it in bed.

Five volunteers came in last night and the rest should get here sometime this afternoon/evening. There's supposed to be about 40 of them.

I spent most the afternoon in the office making copies for Henry and Don. I went in because I was going to work on my paperwork, but they were in there and I didn't want to interrupt, but I was hoping they would finish soon so I hung around. But I didn't mind making copies, so it worked out just fine.

We had spaghetti for dinner. When I heard that's what we were going to have, I was bummed because I'm kinda getting tired of it, but this spaghetti was really good. The best we've had yet. Then there were devotions. After devotions I tried to make my escape, but the cooks wanted to talk to me about what groceries they were going to need, but they were still talking about what meals they were going to have on what days and what vegetables and sides they should have with each. I finally got away 45 minutes later. It was nearly 10:00 by then and I was tired.

Apple Pie

I've spent all morning running around (or at least so it feels). I found the misplaced files dumped in a corner of the dining tent with a bunch of clipboards and other papers that now need filed. So I've been filing, copying, and finishing (not in that order) paperwork like crazy. I also cleaned up the dinning tent a little bit and put the week's weather forecast on the board.

Apparently the truck I was given yesterday is going to Houma. So I do not have a truck. : ( I will have to share the red truck with Buddy. Buddy call it the Red Monster. I think my car at home is nicer than this truck. Let's just say, I won't ever drive it very far, because it feels like it's liable to break down anytime.

I took a couple hours off this afternoon where I did basically nothing. Then I ironed my red dress so it wouldn't be all wrinkled the next time I wear it. I did a couple loads of laundry and made an apple pie. Completely from scratch (crust and all!). It came out very well. The reason I made it, was that the fruit bowl had several apples that had bad spots on them, so no one was going to eat them. I didn't want them to be wasted (plus apple pie is delicious!) so I cut them up and put them in a pie.

We had about five volunteers come in tonight. The rest get here sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening. We're supposed to have about 40 volunteers this week. So hopefully I will not have to go shopping quite as often. Though the employees at Sam's are very nice, being there 11 times in 6 days is a bit much.

The good news is the gas and electrical guys finally made it to Pearlington, so their volunteers are able to stay there this week. So that's less shopping for me and less driving and cooking for the volunteers.

Olive Tree

There was a village manager/worksite manager meeting today in Olive Tree (which is another volunteer village right outside New Orleans). It was mostly a chaotic vent session. I asked about my truck. It is now officially a Pearlington truck, so I won't be getting it back. : ( Leslie said the one I'd been borrowing could be mine, so I will still have a truck.

I rode to and from the meeting with Don and Buddy. Don regaled us with stories of things he's done. And let me say, he is quite a character. For instance, he was once a bouncer type person and two guys at the pool table got into and one of them hit the other in the throat with the stick, which crushed the other guy's windpipe. So Don cut his throat and put a straw in and was breathing for the guy. When the police showed up, she didn't know what was going on, so she tried to handcuff Don. He took her down, and put her own handcuffs on her, told the other bouncer to put her in the backseat of her cruiser, and continued to breath for the guy. When the EMS guys got there, they took over the guy with the crushed windpipe. The back up police arrested Don for assaulting an officer. The charges were dropped when the parents of the guy told how Don had saved their kid's life and the policewoman explained she had misjudged the situation. He got to keep the handcuffs. Ironically, Don ended up teaching that policewoman and many others on the force self defense. Anyway, it made for an interesting trip.

Once we got back to camp, I was pretty much in the office until the dinner bell. I had to make copies of and file a bunch of papers. It wouldn't have been so hard if someone had told me earlier that I would need to do this. But since no one did, I not only have a huge stack of papers to go through (many of which I will need to complete information on), but I have to round up papers that neither Buddy nor I saved because we didn't know we should. Some of the things I will have to go get from the main office.

The groups were not very communicative, so we thought there were going to be 40 for dinner, but most of them went out to eat. So there were 14 counting all the staff. But man, was it good! They cooked chicken that had been marinated in yogurt and dry salad dressing mix (which sounds weird, but was very yummy), mashed sweet potatoes (a favorite of mine), grilled vegetables, rice, dinner rolls, and salad. And there was fruit salad for dessert. We have quite a lot of leftovers, but these are yummy leftovers!

For devotionals, they sang several of the older hymns, so I didn't know them, but they were simple and we had sheet music, so I was able to sing along. I did know two of the songs, but they sang them waaaaaay too slow. And because the guy who started every song was a bass, they were all in too low a key also. But we managed and I think most people enjoyed it.

Erters and Copters

Harold and I went to a luncheon hosted by the Red Cross to thank all the volunteer organizations that have helped them. It was at a college and they sent us through the lunch line before students started showing up. But, hey, free food. Who's gonna complain? After everyone finished eating they presented plaques. We left at about 12:30. I brought Harold back to the village and I went to Sam's to get some things we needed. Then I had to go to Wal-Mart to get RV toilet paper because I couldn't find any in Sam's. Then I had to go to Winn Dixie because neither Sam's nor Wal-Mart had sweet potatoes. Well, Wal-Mart had them, but not very many and they were individually shrink wrapped. Not exactly what you want when buying in bulk.

Henry sent me an email asking me to enter the volunteer hours into the DRD database. But he has all the time sheets. So I told him I would be happy to do it if he could tell me where to find the sheets. He doesn't know where they are, but will let me know when he finds them.

So while I waited for Henry to find everything, I took a half hour nap. Then I went to the kitchen to raid the fridge, but there were a bunch of volunteers in there (the ones cooking dinner) and they needed hamburger buns. So I ran to Sam's to get some. I didn't mind going to Sam's, but it frustrates me that I couldn't find the ones I bought earlier this week. We haven't eaten anything with hamburger buns and I bought about five bags of them. I could only find one.

Anyway, after that I took a longer nap. Chris came in and said hello. We discussed comforters because he was going to ask his mum to send him his from home (because he likes it better than the blankets he has here). He asked what an erter was. I said "I think it means comforter as in something that comforts." And he said "Oh! Then we're the comfortees!" I said yes and laughed because he'd just figured that out.

Then we went to dinner which was pulled pork sandwiches and broccoli and corn and salad. Very yummy. There's sort of a fire pit on the lawn and the volunteers lit a fire. It was nice. But I didn't stay out long because mosquitos the size of helicopters come out when the sun goes down.

Speaking of which, an actual helicopter passed me on the highway. It was on a trailer hooked up to a truck. But it was sort of funny. Look! A helicopter! On the highway!

The Hulk

When I woke up this morning, I had a huge kink in my neck. It's still there, but it's loads better than it was this morning.

Jessie took my truck today. : ( I was very sad. They should give her a truck of her own. So I had to borrow Buddy's truck to go to my doctor's appointment and Sam's. The doctor's appointment was fine. The nurse took my temp, weight, height, etc. then the doc checked my heart, ears, throat, etc. then another nurse came in and stuck me with a needle. That was it. But getting out of the parking lot was insane. The rows were a little too close together. There was a truck parked directly behind me. I had to pull forward and backward (I'm not exaggerating) about 20 times to be able to get out without hitting either the truck behind me or the car next to me. It was ridiculous.

Anyway, I came back to the village, made a sandwich, then went to Sam's. I took one of the volunteers with me. (She volunteered to go.) It was an even bigger truckload than the one I got the other day. We put everything away and I went to my trailer to take a nap. I slept a little and read a little and then went to dinner (which was chicken fajitas. mmmmmm!). Chris and I worked on the new puzzle for a while. Then I read some more of my book and went to bed.

This is the Hulk puzzle.









This is the anime puzzle.












This is what we've done of the snow leopard puzzle.









And this is what we've done of the other puzzle.

Attacked by Presbyterians

Chris came to church with me and we went to the one on site because his aunt and cousin came. Apparently Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving in October which is why they were visiting.

Chris and I solved two of the puzzles already. One was only 100 pieces. It was of The Hulk. The other was 300 pieces and it was some anime characters. The anime one took us a little under an hour to finish and the Hulk took us 12 min. (We tried to do it in 10, but didn't quite make it.) We used the puzzle glue on them and they are now hung up on Chris' walls. We started on another puzzle that looks to be as difficult as the snow leopard one. So now we've got one giant puzzle in each trailer.

Volunteers trickled in all day. There are 70-80 staying here this week. I am so glad I don't have to do the cooking!

After dinner, I went to help with orientation, but they were waiting for one of the groups to get back from dinner. So I took the grocery list and placed another Sam's order. By the time I got that taken care of, they were almost done with orientation.

Lots of Groceries

I slept in a little this morning. When I got up, Henry was trying to figure out what jobs the volunteers are going to work on this week. I ran back and forth to the office a couple times to get stuff for him and Don. Then I worked in the office putting all the incoming groups on the white board, though I'm not really sure how accurate the information I had was. I went to Sam's in the afternoon to pick up the order I'd placed yesterday plus a couple extra things. The bed of my truck was full of groceries. The crazy thing is, that will probably only last a couple days. We're supposed to have around 70 volunteers this week. Buddy helped me put all the groceries away and then I cooked a frozen pizza to eat as a late lunch. (It was about 3:00 by then.) I went back to my trailer and Chris stopped by. We worked on the leopard puzzle a little and then ran to Winn Dixie to get some soup since that's about the only thing he can eat right now. So he had vegetable, alphabet soup and I had oatmeal for dinner. He's going to go to church with me tomorrow. We're going to the Westminster one my mum recommended. So we'll see.

Oh yeah, Jessie (the volunteer that worked on puzzles with us) mailed us about four puzzles today. Very exciting!

Sam's Club

Today is Chris' birthday. I got up and made ginger waffles.

This morning (after making breakfast) there was a meeting about the handbooks for Village Manager and Worksite Manager. We basically got an overview of what was in them. I will have to find time to read it a little more closely. Leslie also gave out shirts and jackets and ball caps (with the PDA logo on them) to the newest folks that hadn't gotten theirs yet. Then I headed over to the office to place a Sam's order online. That ended up being a little bit of a fiasco. I selected all the things I wanted and got it all sent in and confirmed and whatnot when I realized I had the wrong pickup location. So I called the customer service number and the guy told me he couldn't just change the location, the order would have to be canceled and he needed the guy in Louisville (whose name the account is under) to call in to cancel it. Then he gave me the number to a local Sam's store to call and talk to them about it, but the number is no longer in service. So I called the customer service number again and the lady who answered this time was much more helpful. I got the order cancelled. I had to reselect the things I wanted and this time I clicked the "change pickup location" button before submitting it. Changing the location cleared the cart, so I had to find everything AGAIN. Finally I got it right (I hope!) and the order should be ready to be picked up in one or two days. After that mess, Donna and I went to Sam's to pick up stuff for dinner tonight. By the time we got back and got all the groceries put away, it was about 3:30.

One of the groups was leaving this afternoon and they were going to leave all the tools at the worksite and I was supposed to go pick them up once they were done, because they were leaving from the worksite instead of coming back to the village. I had asked them to call Buddy (since I still don't have my phone back) when they were through, but they didn't. But this morning they had said the absolute latest they would be there was 3:30 and they were planning on being out closer to noon or 1:00. So I drove over. There was a little bit of traffic, but it wasn't bad...at first. Then there was an accident. Apparently a boat fell off a trailer. Anyway, what is usually a 20 min. drive to get to the house took me and hour and a half. But I did finally get there and get everything loaded into my truck. There was almost no traffic on the drive home (thank God!) so it only took 20 min. Some of the volunteers went out for dinner tonight, so we were a small crew at dinner. We had tacos.

When I had Buddy's phone this morning, I forwarded all the team contact and skill sheets to myself, so I can see them on the computer and print them out to file them. That will (I think) be my project for tomorrow. It's going to be my job to handle the computer and filing stuff, make sure Henry gets the skill sheets, and call the team leader to make sure everything is good to go.

Bathtub

This morning I took one of the volunteers to Home Depot to exchange a couple vanities. There was this kinda dumb mold training thing at 9:30. I don't think I learned anything I didn't already know, but that's okay. The Orange Grove computer is back and running, so I spent a while in there looking at that and cleaning out my email and updating my contact list. A couple showed up needing help getting into a house, so I asked Wilf what to do and he said call Christi and she said for them to apply through FEMA which they said they'd done, but they hadn't qualified and Christi said the number 211 is a help hotline so I told them to try that. I was showing Harold and Donna how to look at their emails on the computer when Henry called to tell me he wanted me to go to Mobile to pick up a bathtub. So I went over to the office and Henry gave me the invoice and looked up directions to Mobile for me. It would have been an hour long drive (one way) but I didn't end up going because we purchased the tub at the Home Depot here, we couldn't transfer that to pick up the tub at the Home Depot in Mobile. So Henry will just have to wait for the tub to come in at the Home Depot here.

Kwanset Huts

I went to Samm's in the morning to pick up groceries for the next two days. Heather said if I didn't have anything else to do around camp, I could come down to Pearlington and they'd find me something to do. So I was getting ready to head out when Buddy told me he needed me to stick around and get a hold of a plumber to come fix the toilet trailer because it was really backed up and Buddy couldn't fix it and he had to leave for school. So I was kinda bummed that I was going to have to stick around camp and do nothing all day instead of go to Pearlington and be useful. But Buddy came back because his teacher got called away for something and all they were going to do in class is go over a test that he got a 102% on. So he stayed here and got a plumber and I went to Pearlington. I helped Heather clean the shower trailer, then untangled some light cords, stacked some scrap lumber neatly so it wouldn't take up as much room and would look nicer, and helped Chris and Harold and a couple volunteers make the floor for the Kwanset Huts (which are giant tents that can sleep 30 volunteers or something like that). I gave Harold a ride home. In the evening Chris and I drove to the beach. There wasn't much to do because (since it was already dark) it was too cold to get in the water and there weren't any shells along the water line. But it was pretty and we stayed out admiring the view for a few minutes before coming back to the village.

Flying J's

The breakfast bell woke me up. I didn't hear my alarm go off this morning. I got dressed and picked up a couple pancakes that I ate as I walked to the tool trailer. I helped get everything the volunteers needed loaded into my truck. While they got themselves organized and ready to go I let Joe out...on a leash. We did not play catch the dog this morning. I drove the volunteers over to the worksite, then came back to the village. Harold and I took the empty propane tanks to Flying J's to refill them. It cost us a little over a $100 to fill 12 tanks. I got some lunch and then took Joe for a short walk down the street. When we got back to the village, I let him off his leash and threw his stick for him and chased him around a little. This afternoon I did some laundry.

The new Pearlington Assistant Manager got here today. She will probably be living here for a couple days until they get everything squared away at Pearlington. Her name is (I think) Jessie.

It rained on and off all day. So it is nice and wet outside and the beach will probably have to wait for another day. Because, although it has temporarily stopped, it looks like it wants to rain some more.

And now we have to go feed Joe and let him out so he can go to the bathroom.

Home Depot

I spent my entire morning running back and forth to Home Depot. The volunteers told me they needed rollers for popcorn ceilings, paper towels, finishing nails, 2 1x3 boards and 16 1x4x10 boards. So I went and got everything except the finishing nails, because the only ones I could find were for nail guns and they hadn't brought one to the site. I got back to the site and the guy looked at the boards and said he needed 1x6 boards, not 1x4 and he thought that was what he had said. So I got to go back to Home Depot and trade out the boards. I came back to the village and let Joe out of the trailer for a little while. He was not thrilled when it was time to go back in and he played hard to catch. And he can really be hard to catch! Henry wanted me to go by the other worksite and see if Don (the new worksite manager) needed me to pick up anything. They were done for the day, because there wasn't anything more they could do with the materials they had and it was getting ready to rain. But he had me return a couple 1x6x8 boards and pick up 8 pieces of molding. It started to rain as I was loading them into my truck. I had to stop at Winn Dixie to pick up tomatoes for on the burgers this evening and then I had to get gas. By the time I finally made it home it was almost 5:00. The volunteers made burgers and hot dogs and baked beans and salad for dinner. It was pretty good. It's been raining on and off since after dinner and looks like it will continue to do so through the night. And possibly some tomorrow also. That's about all I know.

Puzzles

I didn't go to church this morning because I didn't get up until about 9:15. Don and Chris took railroad ties to Pearlington this morning. I made cinnamon rolls. They were good. When Chris got back, we went looking for puzzles. There used to be a puzzle store in the mall, but it apparently no longer exists. It is ridiculously hard to find puzzles. We did not have any luck today. I let Joe out this afternoon and chased him around for a while, then put him back in his trailer and fed him. We had spaghetti for dinner then we had orientation for the Orange Grove folks. Heather's going to do Pearlington's tomorrow after breakfast. Buddy did most of the orientation and then Henry talked about the worksite stuff. He really likes to talk. I left after a while because I was no longer necessary (not that I was really necessary before) and was tired of listening to him. Chris took Joe for a walk during orientation. And now it is bedtime. Because sleep is good.

Cat In Sink

The volunteers left around 7:00 this morning. I did not get up early enough to see them off. Buddy did some more mowing. I fixed the doors on three of the pods. I did laundry, worked on the puzzle a tiny bit, and took a nap. Some of this week's volunteers got here tonight, so we introduced ourselves to them. Heather made box mac & cheese for dinner. But it was the good kind of box mac & cheese. Chris and I downloaded some more music to put on his ipod. Then we went to see Frank about Joe. Frank is leaving tomorrow and we will have Joe until Wednesday or Thursday. Frank said Joe likes to go to the ocean, so we will probably do that sometime this week. (Yay!)

Star is currently sleeping in my sink.









And this is me and Chris in my trailer working on the puzzle.

Snow Leopards

I am actually writing this on the 4th, because I didn't get to it last night.

Yesterday morning I helped Buddy and Harold and Donna sweep out the empty pods and put cots in them. That took several hours. We had lunch and then Buddy and Harold cut grass and I came to my trailer and read/snoozed. When Chris got back he took a nap on my bed because my trailer was cooler. He says my bed is more comfortable than his. I read some more of my book while he slept. He got up when the dinner bell rang. We had chicken and broccoli casserole. It was good. Then Chris and I started on our new puzzle (1,000 pieces - two snow leopards in...you guessed it, snow!). It is far more of a challenge than we had thought it would be. But it is coming along very slowly. Jesse came over and helped us some. We called it quits around 11:00.

Double Dutch

My blackberry broke this morning, so I had to mail it to Louisville so it could be fixed. Hopefully I will have it back in a couple days. I ran a couple errands and got puzzle glue. So I coated both the puzzles this evening. I also found a new puzzle for us, but we will have to wait to start it, because Chris was really tired and he has to get up early tomorrow to go to Luling (another village in Louisiana). This evening, I helped Chris hook up the heaters for the pods. Kyra and I used an extension cord as a jump rope and Chris proved that he can double dutch. Then I helped Wilf dig out duct work and load air conditioners and heaters onto the flatbed trailer. Chris and Don are going to take them to Luling tomorrow. The volunteers had dinner in Pearlington with the home owners they're working for.

Fire

This morning I helped Chris dig duct work out of a storage trailer and load it into a truck so he could take it to Pearlington. Then there was a meeting for village managers. We talked about how to buy food and supplies and such and got an updated phone list. The volunteers came back around noon, showered and went to New Orleans. They are still not back. Chris and I finished the puzzle and went shopping for a new one, but could not find any good ones. My mission tomorrow is to find some puzzles. Things have been pretty slow for me here, but it will definitely pick up next week. We will have 11 volunteers, but Pearlington will have about 40 that will be eating and sleeping here also.

Well, I had thought that would be the end of today's adventures, but is a much more exciting end to the day. There was a car on fire just down the road from us. Chris knocked on my door and said "I think there's a house fire." So we went to see and make sure someone had called the fire department and no one was hurt or anything. Everyone was fine and the fire truck got there right after we did. They put the fire out, but that car is toast.