I Am Woman...

Today, I've been working on building headers and framing out the spots where the built-in dressers are going in the kids' rooms.

I was thinking about how much I've learned in this process, and someday, after this house is long finished, it would be fun to keep building things. I have ideas for another chicken coop, among other things, but I also would really like to use what I can do to help other people. Maybe get involved with Habitat for Humanity, I thought, and as I thought it, that memory came back to ruffle my feathers again...

See, I used to work for a guy that had/has his own business in the AV world. There wasn't always work to keep us busy, so we'd do other things. His uncle was very involved in Habitat, and it happened that they were in the middle of a build one of those times we didn't have much to do, so we went to help one day. As I remember it, when we arrived on site, we found the guy in charge of the build, explained to him that we were there to help, and almost immediately, he turned to me and asked if I could go get everybody some drinks. If there was ever a time when I wanted to give someone the birdie, this was probably it. It is true, mind you, that I knew nothing about building houses at the time, and the most helpful thing I really could have done was get refreshments, but he didn't know that. I could have been a highly-skilled carpenter, but all he saw was a little girl and made an assumption.

So as I've been working, I've been daydreaming about pulling up to a Habitat build in the truck some day, and if some guy asked me to get them a drink, I could hand him one from the cooler I brought, and say something like, "There you go. Now, would you like me to build some headers and frame up for the windows going in over there?" with a look that says something else.