story time

ok, this is how the last 12 days of mission trip to sewanee went down... suffice it to say that by the time we got out of the city limits, my mantra had become "God has a plan", because mine flew in the crapper in a hurry...

6th-- we left a-tex, drove to little rock. it was a long ride. on the way there, i got a big fat speeding ticket in georgetown. i now hate suburbs with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. i paid it today. my bank account is now $181 dollars lighter. damn ticket quotas.
7th-- we wake up, take the little angels to waffle house in little rock, and i wonder out loud if president clinton ever ate at this one. in response to the bombings in london, the gas prices shoot up 10 cents a gallon while we're inside. as a side note, waffle house doesn't take credit cards or checks. but they do have an atm. shady, very shady. full of grease and sass, we took off for the cumberland plateau and a weeks' worth of work and dirty laundry. we were very excited. we arrived in sewanee at about 5pm, got unpacked, set up the kitchen, and took the kids to eat at a place in town called shenanigans. the reuben, according to smelly j (my dear friend from waco, who was another youth minister on the trip), was superlative. the banjo king (one of my nearest and dearest from college, who's married to the fabulous laura (i missed you on this trip like crazy, lady)) and i both agreed that we had one of the smelliest groups of kids we'd ever personally smelled on this trip. note that the banjo king and i can both be very smelly kids as well. note also that we went through four bottles of fabreeze, one of which was antibacterial fabreeze, in an effort to make our stinkers smell better. the fact that we changed altitude rapidly didn't help the stink, either.

8th--friday. we sleep in, thank the baby Jesus. we play the first of many rounds of ultimate frisbee. stinky j and i go into "town" and buy about 30 pounds of lunch meat, 6 gallons of milk, a watermelon that never even got cut, cheese, cream cheese, margarine, etc. we also bought a kick ball emblazoned with the justice league, and got a really cool batman mask. stinky j suggested that we make eggs erroneous for breakfast one morning. i laughed so hard for so long that i was sore the next day. i think the check out lady thought i was high. good times.

9th--saturday. the other group from houston shows up and messes with our group dynamic a little bit. by sunday, after a small fit or two, everything is ironed out. by this time, its become painfully clear that some of these kids don't want to be on mission trip. seems they read "swim all day and chase boobs" on the top of the brochure instead of "work hard and love jesus". what a bunch of morons. no, seriously. i think my tubes may have psychosomatically tied themselves at one point. we also go to pond swim this day-- i was very happy. i also really needed a shower after that swim, which i didn't get until the next day, for a variety of reasons i'll be kind enough to leave out.

10th--sunday. stinky j and another sponsor have to go to the er because they have pus in the back of their throats. i am not happy. the rest of us go to church, and i skip the sermon to have some quiet time. i make it back for the creed, because i have impeccable timing. i see my dear caro's mama at church, and mrs. bet gives me the best hug i've had in days. i feel much better about "things". we have our orientation that afternoon with the habitat guy. the banjo king and i are immediately underwhelmed and i begin to get what we call "worried and upset" because he doesn't have a) enough work for all 36 of us and b) a clue as to what he should do with us if it rains. which brings me to my next point-- hurricane freaking dennis. what a pain in my booty. seriously. mostly because it cut out one work site altogether, because we were supposed to be doing yard work. in a yard full of red clay. not a chance in hell, people.

11th-- monday. we have a wonderful breakfast with the lovely kitchen ladies at st. mary's (who cook big gigantic eggy grandma breakfasts, and make you take bacon AND sausage) and put some lipstick on the pig that was our mission trip. we got rained out of our worksites, and instead of farting around all day and napping, we worked at st. mary's, much to the surprise and delight of fr. doug, the director, and mr. jerry, the groundskeeper (who used to be a nuclear engineer in Chattanooga...). we picked up the limbs from the wind storm the night before. we weeded out the labyrinth. we dug the iris bulbs out of one bed, collected them all in a bag, and replanted the bed with marigolds. we painted one of the dorm rooms. and before the week was over, we built a deck on the edge of a bluff behind the dining room. monday night, we slept like rocks.

12th--tuesday. we eat more. alot more. part of the work crew got to go to the housing site. everyone else kept working at st. mary's, which is how things would roll for the rest of the week. he who must be obeyed and occasionally footnoted was called in to trouble shoot for us, and gave us the go ahead to buy the wood for the deck. fr. doug was so happy and surprised that he cried a little. he loved us by the end of the week. so the banjo king and stinky j drove off to winchester to buy lumber for the deck. and they bough concrete. 640 pounds of it. that's a lot of concrete. i stayed back at the ranch with my little angels. we dug huge boulders out of the ground with pick axes and shovels. it was fun. not as much fun as when we got to start on the deck, but close. at this point in the week, i discovered that i have a full on addiction to milo's famous sweet tea, and begin drinking nalgene bottles full of it. the people at the pig are starting to look sideways at me when i come in to buy things...

the banjo king and stinky j get back from town, and are followed by the lumber truck, bearing the makings of a 16x16 deck of treated pine. yella wood really is wonderful. what wasn't wonderful was that the lumber truck almost go stuck and tore up a little of the yard. oops. the banjo king and stinky j set about stringing plumb lines, the kids and i start digging holes for posts, and the concrete mixing commences. like i said, 640 pounds of concrete is a lot of concrete. and since you're not supposed to breathe the dust, or get any on your skin, i mixed while the banjo king and stinky j set the posts. i called my pops at pound 240, just to tell him what i was doing. he was highly amused. thank God the family trade is being kept up, huh?

i have this to say about mixing concrete-- God bless the person who invented the mixer. making mud in a wheel barrow with a hoe is one of the single most painful experiences of my adult life. it's on the top ten list, at least. top twenty. it was bad. but we got the posts set with little or no drama, and the miracle of all miracles was that we got them all level and plumb with each other. God has a plan. dinner was wonderful. i don't remember what we had, but we all ate a lot of it.

13th--wednesday--more deck building, more floor joisting. more rain. when i woke up, i thought my entire chest was going to explode. it was a long morning. the natives are getting restless. i have the uncontrollable urge to get in the car and leave them behind. after all, the jack daniels' distillery is only 75 miles away...they'd never know i was gone... i decide to stay. that was stupid.

14th--thursday--decking, flooring, raining. one of the precious angels decides to pierce his ears. and he invites a girl into his room to help. 9 kinds of holy hell ensue. there is yelling. there are calls home. in the final analysis, i'm just glad everyone's clothes stayed on.

15th-- friday-- deck is finished by 1pm. floor joists are in by 4pm. we go to the pool. we take showers. at least i think i took a shower. the only shower i know for sure i have taken in the last week is the one i took yesterday afternoon when i got home...eww gross. we tell the kids we are proud of them, because we are. fr. doug fixes us a big hamburger and hot dog dinner, complete with a chocolate sheet cake decorated with yellow roses. i cry a little bit. i also have to go back to the pig (that's piggly wiggly, for those of you who are southern-impaired) to buy bread for lunch on saturday. i'm also out of tea. again. we terrify the children with stories of how they could fall out of the boat an die on saturday's boat trip, especially if they don't pay attention to orientation. they kind of believe us.

16th-- saturday-- we go rafting on the ocoee river. it is beautiful. i buy a fun new shirt and two stickers. and because one of my sweet angels insists that he should be allowed to wear girls' work out shorts to raft in, i also get to buy some swim trunks. seriously, if those things had gotten wet, we would know more about this sweet angel than anyone other than God should know. the rafting part was fun. and cold. and two of my kids fell out of my boat and scared me real bad. but all was well. he who must be gratutitiously footnoted and occasionally obeyed came up to raft with us. he too was impressed by how badly the children smelled. there was almost some dry heaving. we go home. we have compline one last time. i remind the kids for the last time, as i have done every night of our trip, that there is a mighty, mighty God who loves them very, very much. i don't get to go to sleep until almost two for a wide variety of reasons, but mostly because two of the girl angels are gunning for two of the boy angels, and since i'd made it for 11 days without anyone getting knocked up, i was kind of invested in maintaining my track record. they finally went to sleep. so did i.

17th-- sunday. i wake up and feel like i've had the ever-living crap kicked out of me, and then had my head wrapped in cotton. i can't wait to get in the car and start driving. yay. we make it to texarkana. i am very greatful. somewhere between murfreesboro and nashville, the kids start a mooning war between the vans. pretty soon my car starts to smell like unwashed ass, and i feel the need to vomit, call my mother, and throw a fit. i ingnore the need. i focus on getting to memphis and seeing graceland. we didn't tour it. we looked at it. kind of like when the griswold's go to the grand canyon. it was great. it took about 5 minutes. shortly after memphis, i start really abusing caffeine like its my job. little rock never looked so good. we finally made it to texarkana, and i don't think i've ever been happier to cross the texas state line in all my life. by this time, i am so tired that the thought of trying to make it to dallas is enough to make me want to die. stinky j and the little angels cut me some slack, and we check into the skankiest ramada this side of atlantic city. we sleep.

18th--monday--we finally get home at about 4 pm. i turn in cars, praise Jesus that we got home, and go housesit at the home of the four horsemen, who are out of town with their parents. they are having tile put in, and i'm just there to open doors and empty litter boxes. i get some rudy's barbeque, and then i sleep for 12 straight hours.

and that's the whole story. i'm a little sad that it's over. i'm a little sad that this was my last time to be a shot-caller on one of these trips. but life is good. its scary, its messy, its confusing, but its real and mine. thanks be to God.

mil besos--rmg

** ... about the spelling errors: i'll fix them tomorrow. i promise.