So this is how my week has gone so far…

Monday afternoon I had my quilt and craft group here at the church. Terri and I started it last year, but we’re both snowbirds, so some other members took over while we were gone. This year, Mark joined the group as well and he kept going while I was in Oregon. He has been doing projects like recovering our new dining room chairs, working on his leatherwork, and whatever else he’s felt like doing. Tucson attends as well and the women love her. Sometimes, they’ll bring her a new toy or a doggy treat. I have done the cutting and sewing on the new seat covers for the dining room chairs, working on a couple of things for a recent widow in the church, and a little bit on my Wanda’s Journey stuff for The Longest Night (Alzheimer’s Association fundraiser). I had brought a bunch of things with me to work on, but my month in Oregon kind of set me back a bit. I’m going to miss quilting with the “girls”. I have a quilt guild in Door County, but that’s completely different!

On Tuesday, Serenity came down from the Phoenix area for a visit. It’s the first time we’ve seen her since we’ve been down here which is a shame because we love spending time with her. I took her out for a little walk so see where the pieces of the steel building that was donated to my church are being kept. She donated some things to the church boutique, a free thrift shop in a shed, and she got a few new clothes from there.

Wednesday, the temperature was supposed to get up to the upper 80s in the afternoon. Mark and I went early in the morning to the property where that steel building is that’s being donated to our church. Mark was going around picking up wooden pallets and I was gathering and burning cardboard in a couple of big barrels. I was drinking plenty of water, but as I was gathering the cardboard, when I would bend over to pick it up, I started to feel like my vision was going goofy. I suddenly remembered that I had brought a bottle of Gatorade along, so I got that and drank it while sitting in the shade. When I started working again, my vision was cleared up. Gatorade kept me from passing out from the heat!

Despite the heat, it was a really good day! There’s a guy who is a steel sculptor, so he and his wife came and sorted through the stuff all over the property looking for metal he could use in his sculptures. He was like a kid in a candy shop! He couldn’t fit everything he wanted on his trailer, so he said he’d come back. Another guy came with a trailer to take all the garbage piles away. Terri’s daughter came and brought her some breakfast and then stayed to help clean up. Also, there was another woman from our church who’s on the property committee who came to help clean up. The property committee is the group that’s discussing the plans for the metal building that is being donated for a new sanctuary. She was also taking pictures of the steel building pieces so she could share them with the committee. With everybody helping, the property suddenly looked so much better! There’s still a lot of stuff there that Terri and Mike want to find homes for before the property sells.

This morning, Terri and Mike invited us to their home which is only about a mile away from the church. We were there to help sort stuff from the property and try to figure out what goes with the building and what doesn’t. Mike and Mark were better at figuring all that out than either of us women were, but we at least knew how to sort things into piles so that they could decide if a pile was for the steel building or not. Terri told me she was a farm girl. There was one bucket of metal pieces that neither I nor Mike could lift, so Terri came over and picked it up and took it to the pallet where it belonged. The building behind their house was like dropping Mark into a candy store. Mike took pride in showing him all sorts of mechanical things that really impressed Mark! We sorted through 5 pallets of stuff that Mike and Terri had brought home from the property we were at yesterday and we finished just before noon. Terri fixed a big, delicious lunch for all of us and I helped. Then we sat and visited for a long time. It was nice getting to know them better!