An Honest Day's Work

Last weekend I volunteered to help build a Habitat for Humanity house.  My church organized the work group, and it was quite amazing to see how much we did in a day.  I loved meeting the future owner - a woman who works as a doula, and who specializes in teen mothers.  She's building the house for her and her kids, plus she is raising her sister's children, all of whom came out to work on the house.  The crew from the previous weekend had put up the exterior walls and the interior studs, and we did the whole roof, installed the windows, and started the back deck.  I was on roof duty, and I successfully navigated the struts and nailed the plywood pieces into place.  When I say I was "successful" I mean "I did not fall off the roof".  It is a strange experience to work on a roof when the house is full of people hammering nails - the echoes change every time you install another piece, and the vibrations can be unnerving.  After a lunch that reminded me of why everyone in America has type-2 diabetes, I started working on window installation, which involved yet more hammering.  I did so much hammering, sometimes I did it with my left hand just to keep things interesting.  Being an academic and unaccustomed to manual labour, I found that by the time I got home I had to take a tylenol and put my right arm in ice to recover.  This made me feel a bit lame, so to speak.