Weekend of volunteerism

Saturday: It was the first weekend of Girl Scout Cookie sales. Only 2 of my girls showed up. :( But we had a good time selling cookies and I think we did really well cookiewise. I'm not sure what we have left but we are definitely not in the same place we were last year. We are only going to do 2 site sales because I'm on vacation the 3rd week, but that's okay. We're not saving up for anything big. We had so much money last year that we got tto do some other activities with the girls on the troop's dime. There was a funny little incident where a woman asked if we could make change for a 20 and my little one announced rather loudly that we could make change for anything. So this older gentleman comes up and talks about 'thugs ears' and the neighborhood we were in isn't safe blah blah blah. It is true, this Walgreens is in a less nice part of town, but one of my kids knew about 1/2 the people going in so this was not an entirely unknown area to us. So then later my other girl points out that nobody else batted an eyelash when little girl 1 said that out loud so then she says "He must have noticed because he has thug's ears." Totally cracked all of us up. We cleared out 5 cases of cookies so that's good I think.

Sunday: Sunday was the Firefighter Stair Climb at the Bank of America Tower. I have done this the past 3 years. In years past, I did the registration table. Encouraged by Isa and her roommate, I decided to sign up for equipment removal. You get a lot more interaction with the guys and it seemed like a good change of pace. Holy crap it was hard work. Those tanks they carry weigh A LOT! Basically the guys fully uniform up and put on oxygen masks. They then run up all 69 flights of stairs to the top of the Bank of America Tower... Some of them twice. They do this to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma society. (Which is the reason I first signed up to do this as Leukemia is what my sister had.) Working at the top was so amazing. These guys would come off the stairs, some of them exhausted and barely able to move, and it was my job to strip firefighters. ;) Ok really I pulled their helmet off and gloves and helped with their coats. And then I carried all their gear for them over to the first stop where they sat and caught their breath and waited for buddies all that.

I'm really glad I did it. I really felt like an important part of the process and the way some of them would thank you... It was just a nice feeling. I was called an angel by the guy whose water got spilled and I went and fetched him another one. And I'd get choked up by the guy who had ribbons with people's names on it that he was racing for or the guy who had a picture of a little girl pinned to his sleeve. And then at the very end was a woman with her team who had just walked up the stairs... no full gear. From the turban on her head, you knew why she was climbing. It was very intense. One guy collapsed at the finish line and they had to get medics for him. I got some strange guy's sweat in one of my ears as I was taking his jacket and it spattered. But it was all very good to do.

So after the climb was done, Isa's roommate gave me a ride home and I showered and put on clean clothes and the boot (I had done without it all day yesterday something I'm regretting slightly today). Then we headed down to Fados. It was crowded but we found coworker and coworker's roommate. We sat with them the whole evening and just had a really good time flirting with the firefighters. I smacked more straight guy ass than I have in a long time. :) There were several who were very cute (several who am I kidding, almost all of them were hot). I flirted a lot and got flirted with.* It was very nice. :) I got a whole lot drunker than I thought I would. I think it was mostly because I had only 2 little pieces of chicken and a small bowl of left over Chinese food & rice to eat all day long. I did keep drinking water both during the climb and at the bar so I'm not hung over today. As I was walking out of the bar this guy was out there and he asked me what happened to my foot. I told him I have Achilles tendonitis in my Achilles tendon which made them laugh a lot. I also called one of them cute which also made them laugh. Isa was drunker than I've ever seen her which was kind of funny. This morning she apologized for anything she may have done and keeps asking our coworker if she was too obnoxious. It was an incredibly good time and I'm totally doing it again next year.

*The married guy that was heavily flirting with me had early on identified himself as married (as though the wedding ring wouldn't have tipped me off) but said "If I weren't married... I'm not going to finish that sentence." And I said "If you weren't married... I'm not going to finish the sentence either, but you are and I don't cheat so there you go." He was actually very sweet talking about his wife and how when you know you know and he spent a lot of time having fun and when he met her he realized she was the one he wanted to change with.