God made dirt and dirt don't hurt...I hope!

As I lay here in bed recovering, I decided to post a blog about my morning. Well, for many years (since the episode where Lucy decides to help out with Habitat for Humanity on 7th Heaven) I have thought it would be an interesting/educational experience to help build a house with Habitat. I even looked into it on the internet a few years ago, but didn't follow through with it. It intrigued me that the lay public was allowed and able to help build something that would provide protection for a family. I mean, we aren't talking about mud huts here. There is more to building a house than stuccoing and painting. Building walls and a ROOF come with the task. And that was pretty much what the task for today was...raising the roof! (Raise the Roof!! What What)

The day started bright and early at 7am. Well, early but not so bright. Anyways, I was invited to help out from a friend in the SSFD department (from which I graduated at ASU). When I got there, many people I knew from my years at ASU, so it was fun to see them again. Besides, my friend ended up not being able to help out. Bummer! Okay, so to begin, I liked the experience of working with Habitat for Humanity because many people that you work with are not skilled in building houses. Heck, I would say most (if not all) of us had never worked on a house before in our life.

Our task for the day was to put up the tresses. Or maybe it's trusses. Or, better yet, it's probably trASSes, because at times they were a pain in the ass. Anyways, they were those triangle wood pieces that go on the roof to create the angled roof. You know what I'm talking about. There were about 8-10 of us lifting those onto the roof for the guys that were up there to take and lift upward. CRAZY!!! There were 37 to do. After those were done (which was about 12:30) most people got on the roof and started to nail those big ol' pieces of flat wood onto the tresses. I opted not to help out on the roof, not because I was afraid of heights, but because I'm smart. 12pm in the afternoon. Sun's out. They had a hammer and nails, not a nail gun. Umm, not for Nicole! Instead, when they needed wood cut to a particular size, I ran the circular saw across the wood and handed it up to them.

Well, that was pretty much the jist of what we did for 7 hours (minus 30 min. for lunch). It was really a fun experience. The HFH peeps said that we could come out and help anytime and I am considering it. I even got a little tan! From what the HFH people said, we did very well for the day, putting them slightly ahead of schedule. Yay us! Granted, there were probably 30 of us.

So, with quading last weekend and building a house this weekend, my body is probably full of dirt. I just hope my lungs aren't looking like smoker lungs. Eww!