strike that

why my recent posting sucks

It’s frustrating to have so much to write about and so little time or energy to do it well. So this is the post of excuses, in the form of a schedule.

6 a.m. the music goes on and the lights go up. I wake up in my bottom bunk. The top bunk is unoccupied, so I’ve hung a blanket. It’s like a tent. I groan. If the song is bad I hide under my pillow.

I pull on disgustingly dirty jeans and a tank top. I go brush my teeth in the shared women’s bathroom. I get cereal or jam and bread from the front of the room. I eat it in the big common room. Other people talk but I sit at the table of non-morning people. We divide whatever paper has turned up, usually USA Today or the Times-Picayune.

I get my filthy socks and shoes on, pack a lunch, and gather my personal protection equipment, which the more annoying Americorps refer to as “PPE”: hard hat, goggles, bandana.

7 we get in vans and SUVs and drive through New Orleans to a site. We gut or de-mold or build or whatever. In five minutes we are all completely drenched in sweat. In fifteen minutes we are covered in soot or paint or plaster.

Noon we break for lunch. We pull off the more obnoxious pieces of gear and sit in the shade and eat sandwiches and apples and chips and ice water.

Noon thirty we go back to work. More filth and sweatiness.

Four p.m. we pack up. A truck comes to take our tools. We drive back to the church. We race inside to put our names on one of the two whiteboard shower signups. I always sign up for the outdoor shower. It’s a longer wait, but outdoor showers are on my Favorite Things Ever of All Time list.

I take a shower in the little plywood room with the green corrugated plastic roof. I use my bandana for a washcloth, and soap and shampoo sent down here for the relief effort. The smells seem impossibly sweet and fresh.

I go inside and put on clean clothes and no shoes and read my book. (More on my book some other time.) Sometimes I read in the hammock in our very urban yard. I get through about five pages.

Five thirty someone yells Dinner! Dinner is fabulous, without exception. Dinner could be crackers and butter and it would still be fabulous, in that way that overcooked spaghetti is fabulous after a long hike. But it’s really delicious, by regular every-day standards.

Five forty five we have a community meeting, with announcements and recognition and introductions and goodbyes.

Six I decide to stay in, to do some work, to answer emails and read and write letters and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Six thirty someone mentions that it is someone else’s last night. Plans are made to go to Igor’s, the neighborhood bar/laundry, or to Bourbon Street, or to Magazine Street, or to some sports bar to watch a Saints game. Last night we went to the Maple Leaf to see a funk/brass band. We drink Abita beer and margaritas and hurricanes.

Two in the morning we stumble home. I brush my teeth again. I lie in my little tent bed in a dark silent room full of sleeping people, too excited to sleep. I listen to a song on my mp3 player or send a text message. The song ends. No one texts back. I sleep for four hours.

posted by tortaluga @ 5:35 PM