Today was another full and busy day. There was a baseball double-header down closer to St. Louis. Josh drove down there for it and met my mother-in-law and the boys. I stayed here. The boys’ school was having a work day. One of the things they started this year was requiring ten volunteer hours from every school family. The alternative to the work hours is a fee which I am unsure of the amount.

We haven’t gotten any of our hours in yet, so Elianna and I both went to help this morning. I’d told her not to make any plans for Saturday morning. I miss having her around since she went to high school, so it’s nice to have these times when it’s just her and I doing something. I was expecting there to be lots of people for the work day, but there were around ten of us. It’s a busy time of year.

The first thing they has us doing was moving desks out of a classroom. The other ladies were moving chairs. I looked at the room of 150+ desks and my heart sunk a little. I really can’t lift and carry out that many desks and didn’t know how many I could. We had to find 20 good desks to keep for a Special Ed classroom they are hoping to make. The rest were being donated to a mission organization.

They collect and fix up old school supplies and then ship them out to third world countries. The men had several loads of old wooden tables to get out of the basement, up the steps, and outside into the truck. The ladies worked on the desks and chairs. I told my daughter I would sort the desks into ones to keep and others to take out. Unstacking the desks and pushing them was okay for a while.

“You good, Mom?”, she just kept picking them up and carrying them out into the hallway. When the others were done with the chairs they joined us with the desks. When they were all out of the classroom one of the retired teachers who was there helping, a petite older lady who had to have been in her 70’s, suggested we go ahead and start getting the desks upstairs and out to the truck for the men to load.

I finally had to say that I really can’t lift right now, and we found a cart where the desks coming of the elevator could be loaded onto and pulled. So I stayed at the top of the elevator and my daughter with me so that when it opened full of desks stacked one on top of the other she and I could lift the two together. Four desks fit on the cart and we took turns pulling it out and down to the truck and unloading it.

The lifting still causes this destabilization. I told my daughter though that’d it’s probably good for me to have times like this where I am doing a little more than I am used to doing. Your body needs the memories of doing something more and being okay after doing so. I still want to cry when I think about this, how it’s like this handicap I’m living with that keeps showing up. I know this is the way it has to be.

When that was over we swept the classroom floors. After that they had us put together the new Little Tykes equipment they’d gotten for the preschool. It was much less physical and done outside in the spring air. All of that added up to three and half hours for each of us, so seven hours total toward the hours that were needed. They had Subway sandwiches, chips, cookies, and water for lunch for us.

I came home and slept. Before doing that we walked over to the CGC to put the clothes in the dryer. Our dryer has been broken for the past two weeks and I haven’t had a chance to get out somewhere to pick out a new one. Before we left for the work day I’d put my son’s shirt in the washer to have it ready to wear for a prom he was going to. Dad left the games early to bring him back to get ready.

Elianna and I drove into Washington Park and he followed us. Everyone looked very nice. He was going with a local pastor’s daughter who is a part of the youth group where his friend from camp goes who is also dating another camp friend. Usually the way they do it here is that the guy gets a vest or a tie to match the color of the girl’s dress. Several of the parents were there for pictures and we took many.

I feel like lately I keep writing about what’s happening but never get around to saying what I feel about all of it. By the time I get a chance it isn’t really what I want to talk about. I think writing is actually a way of calming my feelings. I read somewhere that writing out facts works to balance out the right brain when it’s overactive. Some people say the right brain left brain stuff is a myth but I disagree.