Wednesday was another day where I had all sorts of different things that made the day great.
1. I started off the day with my mom, dad, and kind neighbor at Goodwill/Easter Seals in Saint Paul. We spent two hours filling a 20 foot truck full of medical equipment to send down to Matagalpa, Nicaragua. A few years ago my dad became involved with a non-profit organization Familias Especiales/the Wisconsin-Nicaragua Wheelchair Project (http://www.wnwp.org/aboutwnwp.php) and he is now responsible for getting donations from MN, to WI, to then to Nicaragua. He found the organization when he was traveling in Nicaragua a few years ago and has since become super involved. Through the generosity of Goodwill/Easter Seals about every four months they have a donation ready to go of wheelchairs, walkers, standers, canes and various other equipment. My dad (and whoever else is willing to help) then loads up a big ol' truck and he drives it down to Madison, WI where it's organized in a warehouse and then in a few weeks will make the trek to Nicaragua. Overall, it's a super long process, but pretty much every step of the way is done by volunteers, which means it's harder to stick with a tight timeline. My dad started helping sometime around my junior year of college, so I'm usually not around when it comes time to send off the truck, but yesterday morning I was! With four of us helping, things went pretty quick and it was so neat to see the truck packed to the brim with all the equipment!
2. I got to enjoy a lazy afternoon! With my parents driving to Madison with the truck of medical equipment and my sister at work, I had the house and the car to myself. I made a trip to the public library, drove to Dunn Brothers (yes, I did go twice in three days) and sat and enjoyed a Chai Latte, started and finished Durable Goods by Elizabeth Berg (a quick and good read) and ran into an old high school friend. Bliss.
3. Trina and I had our own family dinner, complete with a full on meal cooked by me! Pasta with pesto, carrots and clementines. Simple, but it covered all the food groups! (Or at least most of them I think...) After dinner we went to a neighborhood solstice celebration, where we got to see people I haven't seen since summer and everyone shared one wish for humanity for the coming year. Lots and lots of positive things were said, plus there was Le Bouche de Noel, which is essentially chocolate cake, with chocolate ganache in the layers with chocolate frosting on the outside. You can never go wrong with all of that!
4. I learned how to fix a door! Last night as Trina and I tried to head out, I went to open the door and the doorknob came off in my hand! I tried for an hour to fix the doorknob, to loosen the door latch, to take door off it's hinges, all to no avail! (Thank goodness for back doors!) When my dad got home, he and I worked away at it and eventually loosened the latch enough to open the door. Then he showed my how to unscrew the latch fixture from the door and all of the sudden, bam, there was the whole fixture! I unscrewed it and found where something had come loose, put it all back together, put it back in the door and it works!! While I had quite a bit of guidance from my dad, I still did it mostly on my own. Talk about empowering! :)
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