Damon just told me to stop talking because my voice is horrible. The air quality in Chattanooga is “unhealthy” and my white car looks yellow now, since it is covered in pollen.
Allergies have been my bane the last few weeks, but as the types of allergens shift so do my symptoms. And I don’t think all the outside time the last few days have been so great either. So I am dealing with a throat coated in yuck and a voice that is irritating to hear.
But I will persevere, power through, and hopefully kick this out the window soon.
For non-exertion activities, today I finally finished uploading all the pictures of the playground build to Flickr. You should check them out, because it too is an activity that doesn’t require a lot of exertion and won’t affect your breathing.
I took a sponge bath of mineral spirits this evening. It wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t pretty.
The last day of the playground build was all about finishing touches and shellacking every inch of exposed wood. Since Damon worked so hard the last three days, he watched Fuller while I took foam brush in hand and helped with the ginormous task of shellacking.
I am not a very neat painter. Shellacking isn’t that much different than painting and I ended up with a lot of it on me. Which leads me to the sponge bath of mineral spirits and sawdust to scrub the shellac off my hands, fingers, arms, and legs.
I took this picture near the end of the day. If you look closely you can see parts of the playground in the background. You can’t see all the dirt, but trust me I was dirty, sweaty, and tired. But I was (and am) so happy that this playground was built and next week we can take Fuller to burn his energy off on the big slide and swings.
This experience was amazing, and I promise to tell you more about it later. I need to go to bed.
It has been a long three days. In our family Damon deserves the most pampering because he has been the hardest working. Fuller and I go to the playground site and hang around, taking pictures, eating food, offering drinks to workers and we feel wiped.
I think a lot of it is the heat. It was 84 degrees when we came home at 6:30 this evening. Very, very warm. I am afraid that Fuller got sunburned, despite my sunscreen efforts on his chubby cheeks.
I kind of became the unofficial photographer of the playground build mainly because of the sheer volume of pictures that I have put up on Flickr. I have a lot more on our computer, so if you see our Flickr sets and think, “That’s a lot of pictures!” just imagine what we didn’t post.
I wanted to pass on that if you are following our playground pictures that I have divided them up into separate sets:
PreBuild Day 1 Day 2 Day 3
That is all for now. I have to go get Pizza because Damon was expecting pizza for lunch. And the burgers from Captain Jack’s were very good, but apparently D really, really wanted pizza. And he deserves what he wants. He has worked very hard.
This is the tower in the toddler area of the new playground. A lot of people showed up yesterday to work, and today they need 200 or more volunteers. This is truly a community effort and it is so much fun to watch!
I was going to help today but my childcare fell through. Since Fuller isn’t potty trained, he can’t go to the free childcare at the rec center. So in about 20 minutes I may start calling around to see who can watch Fuller.
The group also needs more tools, especially generators. If you are reading this on Saturday and think you can help… come on over. They are taking anyone who walks up to the registration table. They have an awesome tool cataloguing crew, so your tools will be returned to you. And there is plenty to get done. Tomorrow is the last day!
The 5:30 top story on WRCB was the St. Elmo playground build. I just uploaded the video to YouTube so it may take a bit before the video’s ready to be viewed.
Alli has also uploaded more photos to our St. Elmo’s park album on Flickr. Currently, she’s posted, like, 160 photos… so, I’m thinking maybe we should divide the photos into multiple albums or something.
Not surprisingly, I’m featured prominantly – I like that.
Here is my man, ready to get building on the St. Elmo playground.
I was so excited about today that I couldn’t sleep past 5:30. I finally got up at 6. Fuller slept in. I have no idea how that happened.
I walked over to the park to take more pictures and the are so many people there my heart is full of joy. Those people volunteering their time and energy for this playground are amazing!
Damon is the team captain of the group working on the base of the tree fort. Apparently it is the biggest structure, but the easiest to build. I saw drawings and it looks pretty neat.
Today and tomorrow I am on-call for childcare. If someone arrives at the site with a child, they can bring him or her here so they can play where it is safe.
On Saturday, the biggest day of the build, I will be dropping Fuller off at a neighbor’s and then heading over there to help as well. My skill level is a 1, which means raking mulch, sanding wood, light painting, or working the volunteer table.
