Sarah and I are really awful at waking up. Today we woke up late, at 6:30, and had to rushrushrush to get to our bus on time. Not enough time for coffee, and it was a rough time there for a couple of hours after a late night in the Quarter. Advil was necessary.
We finished up our first house, 8404 Benjamin St. This is our entire team, in our first triumph:
And a couple of ironies we found near the end. On the left, a Hurricane Tracker Chart...which survived the hurricane. On the right, self-explanatory (it was actually a divorce book, but it landed just like that on the pile of crap).
I should pause for a moment since most of the people reading this don't know Sarah. She is my accidental-now-good-friend I met on Saturday at the airport. She is a teacher through Teach for America and lives on a Navajo Reservation 35 miles from Gallup, NM. i.e., BFE. She's originally from NY, went to Cornell, and we get along great - best part being that we have the EXACT same sense of humor and have been feeding off of each other all week. 2t, you'd love her.
On to our next house, a HUGE 2-story which had already been gutted, but not that well. To give you an idea of how high the water got in St. Bernard Parish, see pic on right. Where the mold stops is how high it got...on the 2nd floor!
Our main task with this house was originally to 'finish up'. However, while uprooting baseboards on the second floor (how COOL am I, I was pulling up baseboards while y'all suckers were at work/school) I noticed the oak flooring was really damaged, and in parts, still wet! We were told the owner did not want the flooring removed, but we asked the Americorps team leader to call him back to let him know it seemed dangerous to keep. He agreed; we were excited. Then the following conversation ensued:
Donal (sharp, unfunny dud in our group): Do y'all know how hard it is to pull up wood floors?!
Sarah: Well, I didn't come here to lift pillows.
Donal: And we don't have enough tools. This is going to take us all week.
Sarah (at this point we're both sick of him): Well, I didn't cut my nails, so I'm just going to go at it with my hands {insert hand-digging motion}
Me: Yeah, you know, I did cut mine...but I can just use my teeth {insert growling noise}
At which point, Sarah and mine's imagination ran wild. I would use my teeth while she held my legs wheelbarrow-style. Then we'd wheelbarrow it over to the window and I'd spit out the boards...but not the nails. No, I'd keep those in my mouth so I could spit them out rapidfire like in a cartoon, and spell out "KATRINA IS A WHORE" in the sky. Think arched, Broadway style. Then, all of the volunteers on the street would come together on the street in a choreographed routine, singing and dancing. The finale would entail me being thrown into the pool filled w/flood water and doing a synchronized swim with the fishes, jumping out, and with jazz hands, shouting "I'll be here all week".
[Me 'biting' the floor, and the actual floorboards I tore up, with a flat bar and hammer]
Today was great, all of us were in synch, and the house was big enough where we weren’t on top of each other. There was a point in the day when I noticed no one talking and everyone just trucking away and thought to myself how much of a well-oiled machine we had become in one day. Here are some action shots.
[(L) Susan knocks down some sheet rock. (R) Teri gets rid of the moldy stairwell wall]
[(L) Dan pulling up some baseboards. (R) The main room upstairs after we took out all of the oak flooring!]
The day breezed by, which we decided was largely due to the enlarged working space, cooler weather, and the great refreshing breeze. We decided to celebrate the accomplished day by going out into the city to cause some trouble. First we squeezed onto a balcony overlooking Bourbon St. and had a few drinks, then wandered in and out of bars until we ended up at Fat Catz, which had a live band playing hip-hop covers…
[(L) Left to Right: Raeleen, Susan, Patrick, Sarah, Dan, Me, Teri. (R) Raeleen dancing with her dude as Patrick looks on, at Fat Catz]
