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So today I did work with Habitat for Humanity. I've wanted to do stuff with them for YEARS and one of the nice things about Primatech is that Habitat is one of their sponsored charities. So you can go work at Habitat for a day and it doesn't come out of your vacation days. Obviously there are limits. One couldn't, say, work at Habitat ALL the time and still get paid. But for helping out now and again it's nice that the company allows you to make time for it.
It was, as you might imagine, cold. But I'd dressed in layers and had on a scarf and such so it wasn't too bad. I also put my coat back on when we got to more still labor, like hammering.
We started the day with post hole digging. This was my first moment of "Are you sure you're going to be okay with that, young lady?" which I found very funny because the options were digging or going up on the rickety roof. Yeah, give me digging anyday. Plus I don't mind digging. I probably would've volunteered for it anyway. Whenever it snows I tend to clean out around my car and then clean out around the cars of elderly neighbors if I haven't yet killed myself from exhaustion. And of course there was the tunnel to the center of the earth I dug for my lilac bush, which gave me much practice in the subset of digging known as "SHIT this state has a lot of rocks in it."
That latter skill came in very handy when the hole I and my (male) partner were working on turned out to have what I surmise was the original foundation or walkway for the house buried under our shovels. My guess is that in days gone by these slabs were repurposed ballast from the ships that used the local port. Either way it required some doing and I was happy to dig in - heh - and do my part.
Later on was putting insulation on windows and this is when I think we had more people than we had tasks to do. (I also think my team blitzed through the planned tasks for the day much faster than the coordinators anticipated. Like I think they thought the digging would last all day and we finished with an hour to spare before lunch) Anyway, this was another moment of amusing sexism for me because I was doing some hammering and just as I started one of my teammates - a guy in my department at work - looked at me and asked "Are you... okay with that?" And I just replied "Pointy end of the nail goes towards me... right?" in my dry, CJ Cregg manner. Though in my head I was kinda like... dude. Hammer. Nails. I realize there's a stereotype about women and tools but 1) I'm pretty sure chimps have brains enough to get hammer/nails down and 2) You just saw me do the post hole digging task so it's not like you should be under the impression that I'm too girly to get my hands dirty.
Though admittedly I did not fight to usurp this guy's place with some of the later tasks because he was one of the guys who vanished for at least an hour in the morning in the name of getting coffee, and that was a solid hour of digging work by those of us left behind. So if he finally felt like doing some work - mazel tov. I was just amused at how apparently having hammer, nails, and a uterus flashed error messages in his brain.
We finished up a half hour early. I grabbed Panera on my way home and tried to warm up again which I may manage sometime... today, I'm hoping. (Being warm, I'm already home. That was thankfully managed quickly.) And I can tell that my back and knees are going to be loving me tomorrow for all of today's hard work so I'm going to be a good girl and not run the errands I was thinking of running and instead stay home and relax and cook and be good friends with Advil and Icy Hot.
So that was my day.
It was, as you might imagine, cold. But I'd dressed in layers and had on a scarf and such so it wasn't too bad. I also put my coat back on when we got to more still labor, like hammering.
We started the day with post hole digging. This was my first moment of "Are you sure you're going to be okay with that, young lady?" which I found very funny because the options were digging or going up on the rickety roof. Yeah, give me digging anyday. Plus I don't mind digging. I probably would've volunteered for it anyway. Whenever it snows I tend to clean out around my car and then clean out around the cars of elderly neighbors if I haven't yet killed myself from exhaustion. And of course there was the tunnel to the center of the earth I dug for my lilac bush, which gave me much practice in the subset of digging known as "SHIT this state has a lot of rocks in it."
That latter skill came in very handy when the hole I and my (male) partner were working on turned out to have what I surmise was the original foundation or walkway for the house buried under our shovels. My guess is that in days gone by these slabs were repurposed ballast from the ships that used the local port. Either way it required some doing and I was happy to dig in - heh - and do my part.
Later on was putting insulation on windows and this is when I think we had more people than we had tasks to do. (I also think my team blitzed through the planned tasks for the day much faster than the coordinators anticipated. Like I think they thought the digging would last all day and we finished with an hour to spare before lunch) Anyway, this was another moment of amusing sexism for me because I was doing some hammering and just as I started one of my teammates - a guy in my department at work - looked at me and asked "Are you... okay with that?" And I just replied "Pointy end of the nail goes towards me... right?" in my dry, CJ Cregg manner. Though in my head I was kinda like... dude. Hammer. Nails. I realize there's a stereotype about women and tools but 1) I'm pretty sure chimps have brains enough to get hammer/nails down and 2) You just saw me do the post hole digging task so it's not like you should be under the impression that I'm too girly to get my hands dirty.
Though admittedly I did not fight to usurp this guy's place with some of the later tasks because he was one of the guys who vanished for at least an hour in the morning in the name of getting coffee, and that was a solid hour of digging work by those of us left behind. So if he finally felt like doing some work - mazel tov. I was just amused at how apparently having hammer, nails, and a uterus flashed error messages in his brain.
We finished up a half hour early. I grabbed Panera on my way home and tried to warm up again which I may manage sometime... today, I'm hoping. (Being warm, I'm already home. That was thankfully managed quickly.) And I can tell that my back and knees are going to be loving me tomorrow for all of today's hard work so I'm going to be a good girl and not run the errands I was thinking of running and instead stay home and relax and cook and be good friends with Advil and Icy Hot.
So that was my day.
