Volunteering and a New Toilet (these things are not directly related)

This summer, other than taking Henry to the vet for his bi-weekly check-ups and chemotherapy medicine refills and readying our house for the kitchen remodel, I've also been volunteering at Open Books, a non-profit literacy center and used book store (best combination ever!). I'm part of the "Book Buddies" program, so twice a week a group of us volunteers head over to Cameron Elementary School in Humboldt Park to read for an hour with a group of eighteen first and second graders.

There are so many great things about this: first, I get to revisit books I haven't even thought about for well over twenty years (I could make that an even thirty years, but let's just not make me feel quite that old right now...), books like Are You My Mother?; second, I get to learn about great new (new to me) children's books, like Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Scott Magoon, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague; and then I get to realize that my first grade buddy can't actually read the authors' names on Spoon's cover because they're designed in cursive; finally, I get to hang out with some super cool little kids and read books with them. That, alone, makes it worthwhile. We've practiced new words like "chewy" (thank you, Bug Stew), "could," and "stegosaurus." We've practiced old favorites like "know," "what," and "busy." And we have also discussed a number of exciting things in my buddies' lives, like birthday parties, scooters (and falling off of scooters), Nerds candies, new haircuts, and puppies.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is the last day of our summer session. I hope that my Fall teaching semester will allow me to do Book Buddies again once the school year starts (and it should as long as my Saturday class has enough students enrolled). But if I can't, I'll absolutely be back next summer, and hopefully throughout the year with another one of Open Books' terrific programs.

Two of my fellow volunteers and their buddies (please also note the amazing notes on the chalkboard)

I was not supposed to take my button home, but I forgot to take it off my shirt

In other, home related news, we got a new toilet! Yesterday, a lovely man from E.J. Sievers Plumbing came out, removed our old toilet, which was, apparently, the real problem (not surprising since it's about twenty years old and was the cheap-o toilet contractors put in when they're turning a factory into condos and are trying to cut every possible corner [like placing studs more than 16" apart, neglecting to build electrical boxes for bathroom light fixtures, using glue to affix shower stall tile to the wall instead of thinset mortar...]). He was in an out in about an hour and our beautiful new toilet works like a dream. A happy indoor plumbing dream.

Um, I don't think this is going to work for us.

Yes. That's much, much better.

And while the plumber was going to his truck to get the new toilet, Trevor was able to sneak into the bathroom and paint that awful square of wall that no one had gotten to in probably, well, ever. It's one of those things that no one but us will really know (until they move the toilet), but we know that it's all clean and evenly painted, and that's very nice.

Yesterday, in addition to the plumber coming out, the electrician came out to fixed a minor crossed wires situation and to install our under cabinet lighting, which looks great but will have to be exchanged because Lightology gave us--out of the three LED strips we ordered to be linked together for one three-foot strip--two cool light strips and one warm. So, the lights don't match. After the odd week we had, Trevor and I weren't really surprised by this. It should be easy enough for us to change out, provided Lightology doesn't give us a hard time fixing their mistake.

The contractor's site manager also came out yesterday to check the work, and we brought a few things to his attention that needed fixing (mis-drilled handle holes, missing bolts for cabinets...); our man Dave is out here today taking care of the list. Once he's done, I should finally be able to put our kitchen contents back in the cabinets--knowing that the second layer of cabinets weren't completely bolted, and knowing that there would be more drilling and more dust made today, I didn't want to start putting stuff away over the weekend. So, while Trevor painted (the ceiling, the outer cabinet wall, and the "hallway" wall between the kitchen/living room and the bathroom/bedroom) Sunday and Monday, I just sort of stood around, feeling useless. I did manage to do our 1.5 weeks' worth of laundry, scour down the bathroom once the new toilet was in, and scrub the kitchen floor, but with the bedroom still chock full of kitchen wares, it didn't seem like I made very much progress. But today's the day! Keep your fingers crossed...