Self Care

Before I first started working at Harry's Mother, my first social-work job, one of the questions in the interview was, "How do you take care of yourself?" I'd never been asked that before, and I was young and hadn't really thought about how the environment and the people around me could affect my emotional state. So I pulled my answer out of the air: "Spend time with friends and talk; eat; read books; and get enough sleep." My prospective boss didn't correct my answer - in fact, she probably wanted me to think about it ahead of time, rather than there being a right answer, and this is what I've been using as my standard prescription for self-care, when asked.


Over the last couple of days I have been having experiences that have made me aware that I don't do good self care when I'm in the moment. I am getting better about just removing myself from the situation where people around me are irritating me at work, whether it's their fault or mine. I find work to do in the back room if it's a client, or I walk out the door and either walk up the street or hang out in the back lot if it's a volunteer.


What I don't do well is think about how I can make a bad situation better for myself if I can't remove myself, or, which happens more often, I forget that I can. This usually happens when I feel like I am in charge. I usually forget that I can often turn things over to someone else. Last night I didn't think I would be able to effectively facilitate the group, and it never occurred to me to call another facilitator and ask if she was available to come and do it instead. Though this is probably because my experience is that I'm the only one who says "yes" to last minute substitutions, which in itself is something for me to think about.


Maybe now that I recognize this I will be able to catch myself in it, though honestly I doubt it, mostly because I think I've realized this before - it feels very familiar.


I have definitely been having "Always Learning" experiences this week. Sigh.

Attittude of Gratitude

This past Tuesday marked my third year of involvement with the Alameda Food Bank. My first volunteering gig was helping to hand out turkeys on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in the old trailer. Shortly after I arrived a Board member arrived with his son to assist - and it turned out that I knew this Board member from my previous life in financial aid!


So it is three years later and the food bank has been booming. We're serving half again as many clients as we were three years ago. Now a supervisor, I have recruited and trained (or, frankly, had other train) hundreds of volunteers, some of whom have come and gone, some of whom have come and are still working with me. I have managed the food bank through my colleague's parental leave; I have "shopped" at the Alameda County Community Food Bank; and picked up gleanings from the farmers' market, Trader Joe's, and Safeway. I have helped redesign the way we give out turkeys. I have attended Board meetings, and I have driven the forklift. I have counseled completed many, many intakes, and counseled families on local services. I've done a little college financial aid counseling. I have become good friends with my colleague and his family, and so has Zirpu.


I've been thinking about what was going on for me when I started at the food bank. I was really, really depressed, and didn't consciously know it. I had thought I was on the career track for life, figuring out what my next steps would be in the state association. When I left my last financial aid job, though it was my choice, I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. I had lost my identity as a professional, work I was proud of. Suddenly I was not doing it anymore, and was unable to pick up where I left off and look for a new gig immediately.


When people ask me how I got involved in the Alameda Food Bank, when I tell the story I always include that the AFB saved my life. Thinking about how miserable I was when I started, I especially realize how happy I am now. I recognize the sadness and the happiness in other people who have become volunteers. We do a lot more than give away food; we are all recipients of something at the food bank.




** If you're interested, please assist your local food bank by going to Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest, to find out how to help people in your community.

Faith Fishbowl

In September of 2001 I was working at Saint Mary's College, a small residential college. Zirpu called me on the morning of the 11th to tell me to turn on the TV; I watched images on the only station I could receive at the house and listened to NPR simultaneously. I continued to listen to the radio during my bucolic drive through county parks to get to work. I specifically remember Bob Edwards saying there had been a plane crash in Pennsylvania that, it was believed, had nothing to do with the World Trade Center planes.


Of course, once at the university, there was not a lot of work going on, for anyone. People hung out in each other's offices, talking, listening to online news broadcasts, trying to check CNN's website, which was crashing all day, for news updates. Everyone made and received "How are you? I'm just checking in" calls. Very few calls came in regarding financial aid, and I couldn't really concentrate on processing loans that day. I spent a lot of time looking out the window and listening to NPR online.


The college, which is Catholic and at that time had a lot of practicing Catholics in the student body, scrambled to put something together for the students to take comfort in. Directors of departments had been instructed to allow staff to attend, if any staff member wished to do so. Mass was held in the chapel, followed by a less-formal gathering in the courtyard in front. I attended part of this second event, which included the recitation of the Kaddish and of the Hail Mary.


After awhile I went back to my office to continue looking out the window. The field across from my office was green even in September - the college's intramural rugby teams played there - and the sky was blue, without any clouds. I felt like the faith of the youth in the courtyard had created a dome over the college, which is in a natural bowl, and that their god was looking over us all - even those of us who didn't believe.

The Ultimate Cookie

The summer before my senior year in high school, I worked at a cookie store on Haight Street that was in a former bank (and that is now a clothing store). This was in the '80s when Mrs. Field's were everywhere, the snack food of the times. It was late summer when I started, and I expected to have a pretty light senior year - not to mention that we got out of school around 2:30 anyway, and said so in the interview. I was hired despite the fact that the manager, as she told me, didn't usually hire teenagers because we were unreliable.


I worked a couple days a week as a baker in the back of the shop with two other people. The dough came in tubs and we scooped it out with ice cream dishers onto parchment-lined cookie sheets. After baking and cooling, we wrapped most of the cookies in paper and boxes to be delivered elsewhere. The back room was the "wholesale operation."


There was a "retail operation" in the front of the shop, and the cookies to be sold in-house were slightly larger than those packed for delivery. I worked behind the counter on Sunday evenings, playing the Dr. Demento Show on the radio and goofing around with my coworkers. There were two of them, both of whom I thought were at least ten years older than I (but I was only 16 that summer), and one was older than the other.


Hanging out with them was confusing. Sometimes it felt like they were both "kind of" flirting with me and that they were in competition for my attention. I wasn't used to this sort of attention being paid to me and I didn't really know what to think about it. I was flattered, but I wasn't attracted to either of them - and the fact that both of them were way off limits (since I was 16) did not make them more attractive either. It was exciting, though.


When school started the guys started making plans to be my senior prom date. First one, then the other, both in full hearing of each other, would talk about going out to dinner, renting a limo, and all that prom stuff. Eventually they agreed they would both escort me to the prom, and that the African-American guy would wear a white tuxedo and the white guy would wear a black one. It was totally silly, and yet it was fun to imagine people's reactions to my a) showing up with two dates who b) no one knew.


I quit about a month into the fall semester. I had found myself in three AP classes, and wasn't really interested in working at the cookie store anymore. When I gave my notice, the manager said that she had never really expected anything else, and that she had been planning to fire me anyway. I never even went into that cookie store again after that.


I went to the prom with a friend who had graduated the year before. He wore a black tuxedo.

From A Meatloaf-Deprived Childhood

Mom didn't make meatloaf very often - thank goodness. I ate pretty much everything when I was a kid, and No did too. But the meatloaf was thick and tough and pretty boring, as far as flavor went, and even though I didn't like ketchup very much when I was a kid, I often poured a lot of the stuff on my slice. I realized later that Mom made meatloaf the way she made hamburgers, which would make sense: Mom makes the best hamburgers of anyone. But take an enormous burger and put it in a casserole dish, and allow it to bake in its own grease, and it's not a very good hamburger anymore.

I thought Mom made the worst meatloaf in the world until I had Denver D's mom's meatloaf. Phil and I were dropping Denver D off in Denver on our way to Colorado Springs, having driven from Tacoma. His folks had already eaten, but we were offered some leftovers to make the last 90 minutes of our two-day drive. Phil had had food poisoning the whole trip, so he got chicken broth, and Denver D and I got meatloaf.

His mom's meatloaf was like a piece of plywood in consistency and color. It was the kind of food that you have to drink some water after very bite to get it to slide down your throat. I remembered the ketchup trick from my childhood, and went to the fridge to get some. They had no ketchup! They did have some barbecue sauce, and I poured it all over my slice of meatloaf. I never remember the brand, but I always recognize the bottle in the grocery store, and am loyal to it because it made that meatloaf edible.

I did not eat anyone's meatloaf for years after that. When I was working at the Women's Daytime Drop-In Center in Berkeley, a place for homeless women with children to hang out during the day when the overnight shelters were closed, it happened that there were clients who were fantastic cooks. Each morning a few clients would volunteer to cook lunch for everyone, and I would hang out in the kitchen sometimes and watch. I told a couple of them that I came from a meatloaf-deprived background; while I knew from books that meatloaf could be good, my mom and my mother-out-law made terrible meatloaf and I hadn't had anyone who could teach me by positive example how to make it.

They laughed and bid me watch while they made a couple big meatloaves with ground beef, oatmeal, eggs, sauteed onions and peppers, grated cheese, ketchup, and seasonings. They formed the meat into loaves and placed them on cookie trays - not casseroles, much to my surprise: You cook bread in loaf pans, so I figured you had to cook meatloaf in loaf pans too. It was explained to me that this way the grease runs off and doesn't poach the meat, so you get a nice crust. At some point one of them pulled the trays out and, using a spoon, painted the loaves with ketchup.

Needless to say, this was the only meatloaf I had ever had that I liked. Eventually I got around to making my own, following their example exactly. I collected meatloaf recipes for awhile, but I've gotten enough practice that I make it different ways depending on what vegetables are in the fridge, if and how much cheese we have, and usually with ground turkey and pork sausage.

One Reason People Dislike Mimes

In the spring of our freshman year, Spudwhip and I went through a little phase of being mimes. One afternoon after classes, we put on our mime get-up and wandered around campus, goofing with people. Then we decided to go out into the real world - read: off-campus - and goof with people out there. Our plan, actually, was to go to the bank in downtown Tacoma where our friend worked as a teller and mess with him. Denver D must have agreed to drive us, since he had a vehicle and we didn't.


Just before we walked into the bank, we ran into a staff person we knew from the university, who kindly put up with our antics (while Denver D took pictures. Inside the bank, we did not immediately see our friend. His bank had a fiberglass barrier between the tellers and the customers, which I had not seen before.


Needless to say we did not get to fool with him very much, and only partly because of the fiberglass barrier. Of course, since we couldn't speak, there wasn't much we could do in the bank anyway. Because everyone else we knew worked on campus, we didn't realize that he had a "real job" and had to "really work." We also underestimated how busy the bank would be - in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, we didn't think there would be any customers in the bank. We made our exit after only a few minutes.


Over dinner that evening, our friend told us that we had made everyone very nervous. Because we were in whiteface, some of the staff, including the security guard, thought our intention was to hold up the bank. He said he couldn't interact with us very much because he was working, but also because he wanted us to leave so his coworkers could relax. He didn't say so, but we probably also really embarrassed him.


The next time we put on whiteface, a few days later, we'd been asked to act as clowns at an auction to benefit the university's Alumni Fund. After dinner when the auction started and we were free to leave, Spudwhip swept up a bottle of wine from the table and we played at serving wine as we moved toward the back exit.


We drank the wine that night. With all of the things I have forgotten, I still remember that it was a Covey Run Chardonnay, my first Washington State wine.

Big Brown Eyes

The summer after college I worked as a day camp counselor at the SF Jewish Community Center. I had about a dozen seven and eight year olds in my charge from 930am until 330pm every weekday, with a two-night overnight in the middle week of each session. I worked with a Junior Counselor and a Counselor in Training, whom I supervised/trained. I designed half-hour activity sessions, planned around activity level, travel time, and scheduling around other counselors' equipment desires ("If we can have the parachute in the 10am "thirty", we go to swimming and then you can have it at 1030"). I also taught swimming. I wrote reports on each camper each week, and performance reviews for the JC and CIT at the end of each session. I was also the Hokey Pokey Queen and could lead the whole camp in it for hours: "Put your right thumb in, put your right thumb out..."


I was seventeen and "earned" $100 a week for my efforts. I had almost no idea what I was doing.


My JC was a 15 year old going into her junior year. The Moon was the very savvy daughter of artists who tolerated no bullshit. She had huge brown eyes that would look deeply into your heart if you weren't telling the truth, or, more specifically, the whole truth. Besides working together, we hung out during our precious away-from-camp hours. When The Moon spent the night at my house that summer, she insisted on sleeping in the bed and not on the floor in a sleeping bag, and it became a "Who's more stubborn?" thing. We both wound up sleeping in my bed, which at the time I thought was the weirdest thing.


When I came home for winter break my first year at college, The Moon had won tickets on the radio to a Buddy Guy "early" show at The Fillmore for New Year's Eve and she invited me to go with her. I didn't know who Buddy Guy was, but I liked the blues in a general sort of way, I'd never been to The Fillmore, and it sounded much better than watching TV at home.


I really enjoyed the music. We wound attending both the 9pm and the 11pm shows because partway through the show we had tickets for, there was some problem with the electricity onstage and Buddy Guy couldn't play. It was worked out with the venue that everyone at the early show could stay for the late show. What I remember the most from that night happened in the lobby while they were trying to fix the electricity. The Moon and I were looking around and a man started talking to me. I had just turned 18 three months before, and The Moon was probably 16. Of course he was older than we were (we were probably among the youngest people at the show), and when he asked how old I was, I said, "Almost nineteen." My judgment to respond this way was, of course, due to the fact that I was still basically 17.


The Moon turned her big eyes on me, blinked once, and said, "You just turned 18."


I don't remember being mad at her for doing this. I remember thinking, and still think now, that The Moon was saving me from my own poor judgment. Even though I haven't seen The Moon since that time, whenever I tell a half-truth or lie by omission, especially when I doubt my judgment about why I'm doing so, I always think of The Moon's big brown eyes.

It's the weekend

It's a nice long one too and that's great because I'm really tired.


Yesterday was a great day, but very long: I arrived at work at 9am and left at 730pm. In the meantime I was involved with our big turkey giveaway, at which we gave turkeys to 378 families. The line was a block long, but we got everyone a turkey, stuffing, and gravy in just over two hours with help from the Alameda Fire Department and staff at Wind River Software.


Did I take a break then? No, I went back to the trailer and signed up or recertified a bunch of families. I walked over to the coffeehouse and got the most spectacular drink I've gotten in years: I ordered a regular hot chocolate but because I'm well-known in the neighborhood as a food bank do-gooder, the folks in the store gave me an enormous HC with caramel sauce and a big fluff of whipped cream with chocolate shavings and more caramel sauce on it. It was so rich it carried me through for the rest of the day.


... Which included serving 50 people at the regular pantry program in the evening. We normally serve 25, but all of the volunteers, without saying anything to me, were determined to stay until everyone who walked in by 630pm got served. No, KT, and KT's folks showed up, doubling my staff, and we couldn't have done it without them. They packed bags, helped clients make selections, accepted and logged donations, and generally freed me up to do new client intakes and general taking-care-of-people. We were serving an hour after we closed.


This time of year is stressful and busy and all of that. I've been getting paid in hugs and smiles, which is a great bonus.

In Review

The FBD asked me to write a self-evaluation for a performance review, which I did on the BART train last night while going into SF for dinner with Motochick. When I was a student I never waited until the last minute to do my homework... but I haven't been a student for a long time. This afternoon I learned that my self-evaluation is going up the chain; I thought it was just going to the FBD. Fortunately I wrote rather formally anyway.


The self evaluation sheet is the least complex review form I have ever seen. At Saint Mary's College we had the kind of performance review sheets on which you circled a number (1-5, 5 is low) and then we went to essay questions. This one was hard because there were no hints in the questions, which were two: "Strengths" and "Weaknesses." The "Weakensses" piece was difficult not so much because I'm perfect (which of course I am, ha ha!) but because really, the tasks that make up my job aren't that difficult. The difficult stuff is all about personality.

Strengths:

Welcoming attitude toward clients, volunteers, and donors

Evaluating potential volunteers for long-term positions at the AFB – improvement over the last year

Communicating needs to volunteers – improvement over the last year. Also communicating gratitude to volunteers for their time and work

Counseling clients on range of issues beyond “just needing the AFB.” I try hard to destigmatize needing the AFB.

Similar understanding of the AFB mission as the FBD and how that mission is expressed during day-to-day operations. Willingness to do many things (for example, go to ACCFB [to pick up wholesale produce] on way to work) to forward that mission at all times.

Weaknesses:

Managing frustration – improvement over the last year, but could always be better
(for example: Last spring when a lot of volunteers didn't show up one week, I was really angry and I believe everyone knew it. When a similar thing happened in September, I was frustrated but I didn't lose my temper).

Understanding how the metrics [inventory and client data for each month] are put together and how to read them, which I am working hard to improve.

(b) 1 I am becoming more comfortable with making “executive decisions” about food inventory and volunteers as time goes on. I wait much less often for the FBD's availability/opinion than I used to.

The Six Word Memoir

Have you heard about The Six Word Memoir? Mrs. P., the most voracious reader I know, mentioned it, probably because she's noticed how many memoirs have been turning up on my list of read books. She is a high school English and drama teacher, so she asked her students to write their six word memoirs. Then she asked her sixth grade son. And her parents. For all I know, she's asked the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker to do it too.


Of course I made my own attempts. This exercise reminded me a lot of the assignments in fourth grade to write haikus, counting out syllables on my fingers. It reminded me so much of that, in fact, that I had to remind myself not to count a words like "accidents" or "doesn't" by their syllables.


What I found hard about it were things that were true about me and my experiences, but that I didn't want that to be the whole story I tell of my life. The first thing that came to mind was "I learned: Love doesn't conquer all." Well, that's true, but my life hasn't mainly been about disappointment in love (if I were 20, or 26, maybe). So what has it been about?

All my turning points were accidents.

To elaborate (in six-words):

College decision made in grocery line.

Fell in love with best friend.

Harry's Mother downstairs, Yellow Brick Road upstairs (I know that's seven, but I can't call it "YBR" here).

Too many men, joined bi group.

Zirpu was Craigslist Bachelor Number Eight.

Started financial aid when college desperate.

Took up dancing on a whim.

Car accident in Fresno literally accident.

Googled food bank, selected wrong one.

Auto-Tagged

I ran across a post with this list meme. She says at the end, "I'd like to "tag" everyone or anyone who reads my blog and would like to participate" so I'm picking up the thread until I think of some blog subjects on my own.


Five things I was doing ten years ago:
1. I returned to Vernonia after two months in California (during part of which I was helping Shmeen get ready to marry Shman) and finalized plans to come back permanently. In the midst of this planning, Denver D came through on his way to Santa Fe and asked if he could move to CA with me instead. YaYaWOT's husband's advice was since I was going anyway and it would be cheaper to move back with someone, I should say yes, even if it didn't work out.

2. Looking for social service work in the bay area. It took me some time to realize that with all the schools of psych around here no one would pay me more than $6/hour to do what I knew how to do. One executive director called me (after her assistant advised me to fax my resume) to ask, "If you don't have a master's degree, why are you bothering?"

3. Eating a lot of Ben and Jerry's ice cream (favorite flavors: Cherry Garcia and Phish Food).

4. Being 29 and becoming 30.

5. Doing tremendous amounts of yard work.


Five things on my list of things to do today:
1. Go to the gym. This will involve designing a new routine since it's a new month. [Done and done]

2. Maybe get a haircut. Definitely recolor whether I get a haircut or not. [Not done, either one]

3. Return Knitty's phone call. [Yep]

4. Drop off Zirpu at the movie theatre and buy a bathing suit at the nearby Sports Authority. The elastic has blown out of my current suit to the point where I can't feel it on my body. I always wind up checking to make sure it's covering my lower back before walking into the pool area at the gym.

[I did drop him off, but there were very few bathing suits at SA since "they're changing seasons." I was advised to come back in two weeks.]

5. Write at least one more blog post. [Yes]


Five snacks that I enjoy (right now):
1. Dried apricots.

2. Tortillas, toasted on the range, with melty butter. (I'm big into Trader Joe's "real handmade" tortillas right now).

3. Avocados.

4. French fries. Preferably not curly fries, and without ketchup.

5. Cheese and crackers.


Five things I would do if I was a billionaire:
1. Endow a grant fund for middling students at my college. Start 529 plans for every child I know.

2. Buy a new van for the food bank. Give the food bank an endowment for higher salaries for the Food Bank Director and the Program Coordinator (and/or for medical benefits for same).

3. Pay off our house and build a bigger back bedroom. Buy the house No and KT live in from my mom and give it to my brother. Also buy reconstruction for that house.

4. Take the train around the US and Canada, Pullman class, and get off the train to wander wherever I feel like it. This train trip would also include travel in interior Alaska, even if not by train (though preferably not by Vomit Comet).

5. Take Zirpu to every Cirque du Soliel show and to Teatro Zinzanni year-round.

That's more like ten things. Oh well.


Three bad habits I have:
1. Biting my nails.

2. Not reading the mail that comes from my retirement account companies.

3. Not closing drawers. Zirpu pointed this out to me the other day when I mentioned that he doesn't throw away his empty soy milk containers.


Five jobs that I've had:
1. Baking cookies at an Ultimate Cookie retail location on Haight Street.

2. Selling clothes, from t-shirts to vinyl dresses, and intimate wear at Daljeet's on Haight Street. I also worked at the warehouse, doing shipping and receiving.

3. Being a day camp counselor at the Jewish Community Center. A few years later I was asked in an interview, "Why do I get the feeling you're Jewish?" which was such an unbelievably illegal question that I was speechless.

4. Landscaper at the university.

5. Main propagandist - oh, I mean, Newsletter Editor - for a snake oil pyramid scheme company - oh, I mean, a health supplement multi-level marketing firm (now defunct).


Five things you don't know about me:

Hmm, having already responded to the seven weird things about me meme I'm drawing a blank on what to put here. What you don't know about me now, I don't want you to know.


To quote the person I got this from:

I'd like to "tag" everyone or anyone who reads my blog and would like to participate.

Why?

Boy, am I feeling crabby. Zirpu is, wisely, taking his space.


Work was no more crazy today than it has been for the last six weeks. But that is probably why I'm feeling crabby. I'm glad Christmas is next week, as that means things will be much quieter around the food bank soon.

Two Parties in Three Days

(on top of four in four days last weekend)

We had a volunteer appreciation party at the food bank this afternoon, after service this morning. It was a really nice event, with lots of food donated by local restaurants and live bluegrass music. About fifty people came, but it could have been 100 (and heaven knows where all those people would have stood, because as large as the new building is, it's not that large). We had ordered mugs for everyone as a thank you gift, too.


I get lots of hugs at the food bank, too. So I feel appreciated as well.


I have been so focused on work that I didn't realize until Monday that I had been planning to use Thursday afternoon, when I don't usually work, to hit the party store and get stuff together for the Mother/Baby Shower I'm co-hosting on Saturday for Shanaleh. Then on Monday I realized that I was going to be at the food bank all day and I didn't know anything about what to do about the shower.


Fortunately I was volunteered to get the stuff we needed for today's event at the party store, so while the balloons were being blown up I walked around and thought about the M/B shower. Very quickly I realized I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I'm surprised that so much baby shower stuff is gendered; I thought that showers generally happen before babies arrive, and it still seems to me that a lot of people don't know what sex the baby will be. I could not remember which games Shaneleh had said she thought sounded fun (I have since looked; whew, neither involve a lot of "stuff" to do).


Ultimately I got some little treat bags, and stickers to make them pretty, but I'm not sure what I'm going to put in them (I am considering some kind of candied and/or spiced nuts). I talked to Shaneleh tonight and realized that I could give chocolates as prizes. I know I need to go to Whole Foods for the nuts and probably Smart and Final for candy (as in "Guess how many Skittles are in this [typical baby-related item {omg, what will that be?! Or I'll just use a bottle}) and over to See's for the prizes. None of that sounds bad, but I'll have to do all of it between 7 tomorrow night and 10 Saturday morning. Plus I have to put the treat bags together! Augh!


If I had known six weeks ago what the last two weeks were going to be like, I would have insisted we have this party the second or third week of December. Experience tells me that everything will be fine on Saturday and Shaneleh is a pretty low maintenance person anyway. Still, thank goodness that the other host has her act together. . .

An Attitude of Gratitude

I feel grateful because or for:


First and foremost, the love of my family and friends and the love I have for them.

Also, I have the best husband in the world.


In no particular order except for how the following occur to me:

No and KT finally got married
...and that I got to go to Mexico with a big bunch of people I like because of the wedding

Lizard and Batman, Bug and Boy, and the babies that arrived this year

My job at the food bank and being able to afford to work there

Having a boss who notices when I do a good job and is willing to coach me when I need help

The Bi Women's Group

The support from Boegle and Tea to write this blog

Perspective and humor

E-mail

Blessings I receive from clients

Food bank volunteers, in their wide range of character, age, and experience

Being able to help a couple friends make things happen

Health and strength and safety

Another Jon Carroll Thanksgiving column that says what I want to say

Three Day Week

When the weekend starts on Wednesday night, that makes Tuesday night like Thursday, right? Thank gawd. Today was my second nine hour day without a lunch break. I ate my sandwich while driving from the warehouse to the new building. I know I ate a hot dog yesterday but I don't remember doing so.


I never had this happen when I worked in an office. I always took my lunch, though I did occasionally work on a weekend (even though I don't believe in working on a day off). I know that part of this is because I'm one of those people who will "do one more thing" before going to the bathroom, taking a break, or sitting down (sometimes the first will suffice for all three). I also know that this is the standard the Food Bank Director has set. He's been working like a demon, and the clients need us every minute, so I work like a demon too. Usually he tells me to "go" but this week neither of us have had the time to speak to each other, let alone give each other orders.


In all this the volunteers have been incredible. They've all been working so hard and so steadily, and most of them don't take breaks, even when they work more than a few hours. I have one volunteer I have taken to lecturing about eating and resting; he just laughs and says things like "I drank an Ensure." I think tomorrow I'm going to bring him a sandwich in my lunchbox. Another volunteer worked all afternoon and drove a client and her little girl home so she wouldn't have to deal with all the groceries and a tiny hand.


It is much easier to work this hard when you like what you're doing, all of the volunteers are agreed. Most of them have retired from their careers and my sense is that when you choose, it's easier, more interesting, and more fun to do whatever you're doing.


I have given everyone Friday off. Since we're going to be closed, almost all of them understood I was pulling their legs. One of the volunteers called the Food Bank Director to make sure that it was all right that I had given her the day off.


Sorry, I'm too tired to write something that's not about the food bank.

Good from Bad

Today was a tough day for me at the food bank. Not only did we move this week and are still working out the kinks, but we have been really busy each day, with about twice as many people each day as we normally serve. We served 200 households this week, when we've been serving about 100. I've been told to expect more of the same for the next two months.


Most of today I felt like I was being pulled in several directions at the same time. I think I said "I haven't forgotten you" about six times to different people. The phone was ringing constantly and half the callers just wanted to chat, so I had to walk that fine line of getting off the phone quickly while allowing them to feel heard. At one point I was so frustrated I had to take a five minute walk away from the site.


I did feel really supported by the volunteers today. This is a crew I don't know as well as I know the weekday crews because we don't have service every Saturday. But when I was walking out I told one of them he was in charge and when I came back he was handling a parking situation, a job I usually would have done (as paid staff, the Food Bank Director or I usually play the heavy). He and three others checked in with me to make sure I was okay.

Best of all, five volunteers stayed until I locked up the building and even walked with me to my car. Again, I really felt supported by the volunteers, and when I called the FBD he was just as supportive as they. So as frustrating as work was today was, what I'm feeling is appreciation and gratitude for my food bank people.

"If" Is The Middle Of Life

Choices I've made:

What if I had gone to boarding school for high school?
I took the Secondary School SAT in eighth grade but attended public school a mile from home. I didn't want to go away for high school.


What if I had gone to the large local state university instead of a small private one fifteen hours up I-5?
I decided I should to see what it would be like to leave home. Honestly, I went telling myself I could come back at semester break if I didn't like it.


What if I had moved to Colorado after college?
I had fallen in love and stayed in Tacoma, then moved to Portland with my girlfriend.


What if I had gone to graduate school in Seattle?
I was waitlisted for UW's School of Social Work in 1995, but didn't reapply the next year because I didn't want to go back to school.


What if I had purchased the Vernonia (OR) Independent newspaper?
I wasn't up to the challenge of being self-employed and bisexual in a town of 2200.


What if I had moved back to California by myself?
Among other reasons, YaYaWOT's husband pointed out that since I was moving anyway I may as well bring Denver D with me.


What if I had stayed at CSU East Bay in 2005?
I was attracted by UC Berkeley's reputation and wanted to go there, just like a high school senior would.

Frustrating

When communication isn't happening, whose responsibility is it? How do I fix it if it's not my responsibility that the communication isn't happening? I think I know how to handle it if it is my responsibility.


Today I had interaction after request after question misunderstood by the same person all afternoon. This is something she's done before but she seemed to have forgotten how to do almost all of it. I didn't know anything was wrong until she started complaining about how the bags aren't marked. I remarked that we don't mark them because all the bags always are the same thing. Boxes we mark because they aren't the same. She knew this last week.


She asked me, from across a long room, a question about something, to which I said yes - later to learn that she wasn't asking me what I thought she was asking. When she asked I was tied up in explaining something to someone else and I couldn't go to her, and I thought I knew what she was showing me (even though it was from the back side).


At the end of the night I asked if a pile of stuff on a table belonged to someone and she said it was hers. Five minutes later, when the someone else was gone, she says, "That lady forgot this."


How do I deal with this the next time I see her? I didn't realize how frustrated I was about all this until I was driving home.

Happy Hour in Alameda

This afternoon the Food Bank Director, one of our volunteers, and I stopped at Rosenblum Cellars Winery so the FBD could drop off something at the end of the day today. Conveniently, the tasting room was nearby so we went upstairs and tasted some wines.


We tried a chardonnay, a rose, a zinfandel, a petite syrah, a mourdevre, and a couple others, and I tried to follow the wine conversation. I'm barely above selecting wines by the labels, you see (though the last one we tried because of the label wasn't bad - Wilfred Wong gave it an 85). Turns out that the FBD knows more than a bit about wine, and the volunteer has done a great deal of traveling in Europe, and the guy who runs the tasting room is a friend of the FBD. I just nodded and tried to look wise when the three of them were discussing how French wines differ from California wines, that Cali wines are fruitier due to the longer growing season.


I've been reading about the Mondavis but chose to say nothing, which I think really was wise.


They had one of these gadgets in the tasting room. The guys I was with smelled and tasted a difference between the wine run through this thing and the wine that wasn't. The volunteer bought the one they had for his husband, because it is a pretty neat thing and it looks cool when the wine is going through it, too. I think that Zirpu would dig the Vinturi just for the physics of it, and when I mentioned this to the volunteer he said that he was buying it for his husband for the same reason - though they are going to France for many months next year and he's planning to take it along.

Jawin'

When I'm at work, I often have a hard time sitting still. I work on my feet and there always seems to be a lot of things to do before we open for service. 1pm is the magic hour and honestly, some days I don't know how we are going to get it done. I have finally reached a point where I don't think we'll be ready for service and yet I know that somehow we always are, so I just trust my experience rather than my feeling in the moment.


Yet my boss wants me to take the time and chew the fat with the volunteers. He actually said that this isn't like a normal job where chatting is frowned upon. Shooting the breeze is almost in my job description. It builds community, and reinforces the community that already exists. Since they're not being paid, there are all kinds of reasons the volunteers show up week after week, and part of my job is to hang out with them.


Even if I have an unorganized meat freezer (or two).

Even if the produce from the farmer's market needs to be sorted.

Even if the service area is a mess.

Even if the bread table needs to be set up.

Even if I want to move the worm buckets around.


There are times when I have to quiet the list in my mind and just listen. This is something I am still practicing: I notice that when a volunteer is telling me about his trip or about a USDA report she read, that to-do list starts to chatter at me. For a moment I have this inner dialogue shutting down the list. Doing this actually makes me concentrate on the conversation even more.


Today a couple volunteers brought a cake to the food bank. I was training someone on one aspect of delivery when the FBD called a meeting at ten minutes to 1, which turned out to be in celebration of my birthday (last week) and the birthday of another volunteer (two weeks ago). They sang "Happy Birthday" and we each had a slice of cake, and then I grabbed my trainee and wandered off to continue training him. A few minutes later the FBD reappeared and pulled me back to where everyone was sitting and talking about the 50th HS reunion someone had just attended.


As I sat on the edge of a desk and listened, I thought to myself that this was one of those times that I just need4ed to sit still. I didn't know that the FBD had explained to the half-dozen clients sitting outside that we were going to open a little late. I just sat still. When I worked in an office it was so easy to jaw with a colleague, and at the food bank it's so hard most of the time.