It was a weird night and morning. I was at Wood Dale, the small older church in (surprise!) Wood Dale, which isn’t super-clean, but there’s always been plenty of room for everyone who shows up. The volunteers last night were Awesome, and the new PADS coordinator (Emily) was great to talk to. She has a place for me to apply where I’d work with dogs, so I’m interested in learning more once she gets that info for me.
There were a bunch of new people — one woman, several men. There are two 18 year old kids (if someone told me they were 16, I wouldn’t be shocked) and neither of them seem … um… they probably weren’t their class valedictorians. One of them is quiet and respectful. The other is … enthusiastic.
Another of the men spent his time announcing he was a veteran and blah blah blah, and telling people that if they went to Ogden and Damen, they’d get a pipefitter’s job for $35 an hour if they have a high school diploma or GED and can drive a vehicle. Fortunately, since I stayed at my pad after the lottery, I got out of the Veteran’s wake. Because boy, when you got The Veteran and the enthusiastic kid talking at the same time, I wanted to poke someone with a knitting needle. Preferably me.
Oh, on a side note… I was knitting a red, white and blue hat. I had something in mind, based loosely on a hat I’d seen someone wearing. But, it required a lot of yarn to be moved along the back of the pattern (or inside of the hat.) The problem with that is that you either end up with a mess of too-long yarn strands or (if you’re me) you pull the stuff too tight, and it scrunches up the entire project.
So instead, I just did stripes — four rows of blue, four of white, four of red. It’s not anything super-special, but it’s warm (I used 2 strands of yarn for knitting, to ensure that) and it’s nice enough. I was nearly done and my friend Joe (who had found me the $200 windshield, installed) said he liked it, and I said, “If it fits you, it’s yours.” It fit, and he’s had a bunch of students where he takes classes and teaches express interest in it. So I’m making one for his Geography teacher, and if others like it, I’ll be glad to do the stripes what ever colors (for example: the college colors) the students would like (assuming I can get reasonably priced yarn in those colors.) We’ll see. Besides the possibility of being able to sell some of those, Joe is going to try to use my old iPad 2Gen in one of his classes, and have the students replace the screen that Nietzsche crunched years and years ago. That’s very cool, especially because I’ve been downloading an Amazon movie to it every couple of nights, and watching a movie at night. It’s really nice and relaxing.
So we had a pretty typical Wood Dale night, great food, nice volunteers. Then this morning the volunteers started crashing around in the kitchen (which is just off the area where the women sleep), with the door to the kitchen wide open. I looked at my watch: 4 am. Grrrrrr. But it stopped enough, plus I had my mp3 player covering some of the noise, so I fell back asleep. When I next opened my eyes the lights were on, and I looked at my watch and it was 5:45. WHAT THE HELL? That SUCKS. We get until 6 am before lights are turned back on.
Beyond that, one of the new men decided to sit on a chair in the women’s sleeping area to eat his breakfast, and none of the volunteers shooed him in to the dining area. Yeah, there’s usually a line of men (mostly) in the room getting breakfast, but then they go into the dining area, so the women can get their stuff together and get up and to the bathroom without an audience.
So, I wasn’t feeling all that great when I left. I tossed my stuff into my van and said goodbye to the new woman, and then someone knocked on the window on the far side of the van. I didn’t open it.
“Yes?” I asked…
It was the veteran. Oh, F&ck.
“All your worldly belongings in here?” he asked. (What the ...)
“Mostly.”
“Be careful,” he advised. “Going to Medinah?” (WHAT THE ...)
“Maybe.”
“Me too. See you tonight.”
Not if I see you first.
The perfect example of why I don’t drive people around… and even so, I am freaked out. I wish there were somewhere besides Medinah where I could stay. Or someplace where I could rent a locker for the little portion of my ‘stuff’ that has worth.
Blech.