Oh, I’m gonna say it. This was miserable.
This is no fault of Habitat for Humanity’s, but it was a rough day – which is especially lame because when I started this project, I thought, “One place I must work with in the 52 weeks is Habitat for Humanity. That seems so fabulous, fun, and fantastic!”
But on this day, it was raining all across L.A. As I’m sure you know, anything other than 80 degrees & sunny and the city practically shuts down because of how much people freak out about any weather here.
I dutifully went to the train station. It was just sprinkling in the morning, and I didn’t think too much of it. But as I was on the train headed toward some far away suburb of Los Angeles, I saw that the rain seemed to be getting worse not better.
Of course, that was very perplexing. I’m only used to it “raining” for about 5 minutes at a time out here. As the rain poured more, I started to think this might not be happening. So, I called the man in charge of the site asking if it was still going on.
He said, “Oh, I’ll be there! You can paint indoors.” Wow, well, okay then. I have not yet become too L.A. to go places in the rain. So, if it’s happening I’m going.
I get to the train station (which is outdoors, by the way), because what isn’t in L.A.? I’m trying to stay somewhat dry under this awning thing. Originally, I was going to walk a bit then catch a bus. However, I was within 4-ish miles of the site, and figured I’d save myself the 1/2 mile walk in the pouring rain and just splurge on a cab from that point…
The cab ended up taking 43 minutes(!) to get there. Dealing with the cab company was infuriating. They were SO unhelpful, and not at all apologetic, though they knew I had nowhere to wait indoors.
Obviously, if I’d known the cab was going to take so long, I would’ve just gone for the bus, or at least walked to a coffee shop or something. Nothing was super close by, but I’m pretty sure I could’ve found something indoors within 20 minutes.
I finally get to the site and I’m freezing. I’m dripping wet. Once I get there, it’s just a construction area (of course) so there’s nothing paved between the houses. We have to walk through the dirt. Usually, this wouldn’t be a big deal – except that the dirt is now mud. Everything is so muddy.
So, we walk to one of the back houses. And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow.