Day of Fun

What a day! It began at 7:30 a.m., a good time when you're not in the habit of staying up late almost every night watching movies. But I must admit, movies are becoming my best friend. Anyway, the early Saturday morning was due to an Eagle Scouts group coming to do a service project for Door of Hope Glendale. I just had to make sure they had everything they needed to do their work. Their project is a huge blessing to us - they planted a bush-fence around the side yard so that we can now do stuff with the kids there without them running out into the street. It looks GREAT, and they also bought us a new patio set and some storage bins for the kids' outdoor toys. As I observed the middle and high school boys, it reminded me of being in groups like that doing service projects... and now I'm on the receiving end, working at a nonprofit. It's a cool turn-around. If it weren't for doing all those mission trips and community service, I probably wouldn't be in this line of work.



THEN I had to chase everyone down for drug and alcohol tests. All the women were given extra overnight passes to stay with their families during Thanksgiving, but everyone was supposed to be back by tonight. So I've been going through those all afternoon and evening. This afternoon I tested a resident who was very difficult during the whole process, making it look like she was positive. In the midst of dealing with her, another resident had an asthma attack. I had to leave the drug situation to call the paramedics... it's the second time I've called them for her because she has them so regularly, but this time she was having a whole lot more trouble breathing. It was a little scary. Anyway, then I had to go back to the possibly-drug-positive resident who obviously could have neutralized her drug levels and deal with her. She tested negative, but I'm going to have to retest her tomorrow, because we found a bottle in the dumpster. It was right on the top of the garbage, very visible when I lifted the lid! You'd think that if you wanted to hide the fact that you'd been doing drugs, you would do a better job getting rid of the evidence. (Sigh).

By dinnertime, I was ready to crash. But throughout the later evening I got to interact with some of the kids and a couple of the moms who are very encouraging, and I got filled with a huge thankfulness that I'm here. Even though I have to confront women when they're late for curfew, get called at 6 a.m. to switch the breaker, worry about not spreading lice and how to keep cockroaches away, do drug testing, there's a lot of really good moments, too. I guess I should think about that when I re-test tomorrow morning :)

So guess what... I locked my keys in the office tonight! I guess with all the chaos during the asthma attack and the drugs I took them out of my jeans pocket and left them somewhere. Ugh. So when one of the moms arrived home from her Thanksgiving and was ready to be drug tested, I realized I couldn't get her into the office to do it. Thankfully a co-worker of mine who lives five minutes away was home and came to let me in, God bless her!

I am currently the only nights/weekends manager here. My roommate couldn't find a job here, so she took a nanny job in Chicago. We interviewed someone last week, so I hope that maybe I won't be alone for long. It is very nice to have the apartment all to myself, but we certainly need someone else to split the on-duty responsibilities with me. My co-worker and wonderful new friend, Rita, has kept me company in my apartment lots since my roommate moved out. Here's what we do to keep busy....