More Walking Down a Lane Called "Memory"

8/10/06
10:35 pm

I realize it has been almost a week since I last sat down to journal, but so much has happened in the past week and I've loved every minute of it, honestly. OK, maybe not all of it, but I'm feeling very sentimental and mushy now facing the end of our team's first official spike project in Florida. I sit and write this tonight from the couch (my bed) in our modular home (trailer) in the middle of fu&$ing no where (somewhere between Tallahassee and Crawfordsville, FL.) I loved every moment of hiking the Florida Natural Scenic Trail w/Paint Gallon in hand, re-blazing and lopping branches, sweat pouring out from places on my body I never would have thought sweat could come from. Abby sits on her couch across the room crocheting, trying desperately to get her stitches even, she just informed me that her scarf beginning is straight as a board. (I really do love that kid.) Kenny sits in the armchair reading the DaVinci Code, and nNathan is on the other side of the couch reading Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech that Joey printed from the Internet this evening while in town, while drinking Dr. Pepper, of course. The others are packing furiously getting ready to embark on our big trip to Mississippi. We are getting to be one big family. we all come to collapse in the family room after a long day of trail work (building a boardwalk and maintaining trails.) We cook for each other, make sure we aren't in each other's personal space, we're starting to look out for each other, and encourage each other to get up off our asses Mon. and Wed. afternoons for our required hours of PT. Do you know how hard it is to do an hour of running/strength-training/soccer at 5pm after 6 hours of trail work/construction in the Florida summer heat? I keep saying it's good for me! It'll make me stronger! I hope I'm right.

Galvanized nails are hard (as nails--haha!) to nail into a 2x8 piece of plywood. I kept bending them, but on the second day I got the hang of it and nailed in 4 in a row with no problem at all. Sweet! Made me feel mreally good about things/life in general. Our spike site was an hour drive from our worksite, so that was a pain, but it did help us get a feel for what we're in this program for. On the way back from the laundry mat tonight I had a thought and I was startled by the fact tha for a year I will basically be living out of a red bag and and a van traveling the U.S. helping people who need help the most and I got very humble all of sudden, thinking to myself how lucky I am to be apart of such an amazing cause. Looking forward to Waveland tomorrow. Goodnight!