Fuckin' Nail!

In case you're wondering why the title of this blog is so inappropriate...it's become our motto. This was not a conscious choice. It's just something we found ourselves saying so often and with such vehemence that it necessarily became our motto. Nailing things in over your head is not fun, especially after you've been trying to hit the same stud for 15 minutes, and all your nails keep bending or falling out before you've pounded them in securely.

But that is not the point of the blog entry. Just a little eclecticity from our trip. This blog is about how miserable construction work is in the rain and mud. It's miserable. You've got a hammer in your right hand, a tape measure in your pocket, a pencil in your other pocket, and you're helping someone carry a 4x8 piece of OSB up the stairs. My legs ache, my shoulders ache, my hands are cramped, and I feel like I could sleep for 12 hours without moving. I am covered in mud. But even a miserable day of construction makes me feel good. There were highlights. Have you ever noticed that when you're doing really tedious, even painful work everything becomes hilarious. I mean, the puniest, dumbest joke becomes enough to send everyone howling. It's that distinctly human way of dealing with unpleasantness.

There was the Tyvex incident. Tyvex is this really interesting material that is somewhere between plastic and paper that you literally wrap a house in. It comes in huge rolls--like rolls of wrapping paper, but about 3 times as wide--and you literally just wrap the house in it and secure the stuff with a staple gun. This work requires at least three people (inexperienced people, granted), a ladder, and infinite patience, especially when the wind blows. Everything about this was funny even though I could never relate what exactly was funny about it. We were floundering, and yet it was hilarious.

There was also a period when we were nailing OSB into the roof area of the house--up at the top where the apex of the roof is. So, three of my fellow workers were on a scaffolding, one of them was on a ladder on top of the scaffolding, and I was sitting in the beams in the attic, leaning out the side of the house trying to bend a nail that was sticking through the roof, preventing us from getting the OSB flush with the roof. This was not even remotely safe, by any standard, but it was pretty much the only way we were going to nail that bastard up there. And it was hilarious. We were constantly yelling things like "Where's the hammer?" Where's the chalk line?" Where's the angle?" "Where's Hunter?". And then, we were tired, our arms were cramping, and we kept losing our pencil. It was fabulous. I felt like such a renegade, hammering up in the air, my pants muddied and my boots dangling from the rafters.

Then, the future owner of the house brought us King Cake. This is a phenomenon that I was not aware existed until today. It's this circular sugar-cinnamon cake with green or purple sprinkles and white icing on top. But the best part is that somewhere inside the cake is a tiny, plastic baby Jesus. I don't know what it means if you happen to be the person who finds the Jesus, but there was, indeed, a Jesus in there. "Look, guys, Jesus is made in China."

NOLA: Workday 2

Power tools are pretty amazing. I'm just gonna put that out there. I feel silly when I hammer because I'm not very good at it--I'm too timid to whack the thing for fear of smashing a finger and my arms have never been one of my strong points in spite of lifting weights for months--but power tools I can do. I was actually surprised at how easy they are to use. The only problem is that when you saw something to pieces you had better make sure you've made proper measurements because you can't put pieces of wood back together with a glue stick or excessive cursing either. But apart from the no-margin-for-error-factor there's something really cool about using power tools. Maybe this is just my feminist GRRRRL factor creeping in on me.

The work is tedious, slow, and heavy, but you know what? I love, absolutely love, physical labor. This is what first attracted me to goat farming. I used to work in a coffee shop. And that's nice. Quaint, you know? But when the heaviest labor you do is carrying around large bags of coffee beans you get sort of physically inept unless you have a gym membership, which I don't have unless I'm at school and can use the gym. My first day working on the goat farm was a lot of lifting--five gallon buckets of milk (which, I think weighs five pounds a gallon), bales of hay, buckets of goat feed, shovels full of goat shit...lots and lots of lifting. I got sweaty, dusty, smelly, and achy, but it was the best work I had ever experienced. I felt like I was actually doing something useful and productive (because, let's face it, do we really need vanilla lattes and skim triple chocolate mint mochas with extra whip and cinnamon?), and more importantly, something that made food taste better, my bed more comfortable, and life generally better. The satisfaction I derived from my first batch of goat cheddar was almost absurd.

That is the same sort of satisfaction I am getting from building this house. I look up and see particle board that I measure, sawed, and nailed up on the side of a house. My legs, arms, and muscles ache. I fall asleep before 10 p.m. and don't wake up once. I feel truly hungry when I eat dinner. It's marvelous. And even better, I am helping someone. I am helping to fix what has been broken, neglected. It makes me happy to be doing this for my spring break instead of lounging around. I must be honest and say that I enjoy it because it feels good physically, but that isn't the only thing I'm getting out of this. I honestly care about people, and I am disappointed that community is often less important than individual concerns. This is something I can do for my (national) community that will strengthen it. Because I have been given so much in my life, I feel I owe my community my time and strength. It is not too much to ask. In fact, I don't feel enough has been asked of me. But I will give until I have nothing more to give.

NOLA: First Workday

Today was my initiation to construction. I am known for being useful with my hands, but I have never actually built anything with a hammer and nails and certainly not a house that someone will eventually live in. But then, if there is anything that I am willing to do it is to learn and to make. And so there I was on a scaffolding at 10 a.m. nailing particle board to the side of a house, using a rotary saw, measuring plywood, wearing hardcore work gloves.

This sort of work is rewarding on several levels. First of all, I am able to release some of the tension and frustration I have experienced since I arrived here and saw the neglect of our government. Knowing that I am working to help and alleviate the problem is so rewarding. There is nothing so soothing as action. Then, there is the fact that I am a woman and growing up I was never encouraged to do things like this. I think that if I had been a boy, my father probably would have built birdhouses with me and encouraged me to do manual labor to an extent. Being a girl he assumed that Barbie dolls and a play kitchen were enough. I think that's a little silly. Finally, I am an American who is unable to relate to a large part of my society because there is this shocking laziness and overconsumption that goes on all around me.

I started thinking about this. Working on building a house made me realize that it really isn't that difficult. There a few things that should probably be contracted out if you don't know what you're doing--electricity, plumbing, foundation work. But then there are so many things that even I, a teenager, can do. So why don't people do these things for themselves? Why don't people plant a small organic garden in their backyards or on their fire escapes? Why would you buy organic squash at exorbitant prices that has been shipped from the ends of the earth when one squash vine is so productive that it could easily serve two people and then some? Why don't people cook instead of buying processed foods? Why don't people do manual labor instead of buying gym memberships? But then, the answer to that question is so obvious that I have to answer it here, if for nothing other than my own pleasure:

Because Americans (and I suppose most everyone in any industrialized nation) are so busy working jobs they hate so they can pay for the house they bought with a huge loan that they couldn't really afford because they wanted to appear as affluent as their neighbors who also could not afford their house. We have replaced the definition of success as what you are skilled enough to make with what you are wealthy enough to buy. This is why we have to hire people at a deplorable wage to haul the trash we throw away. This is why we have created an entire portion of our society that is considered permanently unemployed--because we have such a voracious appetite for things that we need machines which can run without (or with a fraction of) people, and so an entire class of skilled workers was lost, replaced by these machines and by executives that don't really do anything except oversee the people that oversee the people that run the machines (and the hierarchy is, of course, much more complex than this, but for the sake of reduced redundancy I chose to keep it simple). So now we have execs as the successful class while the workers are meaningless because a person can be trained in about a day.

But, goddammit, I, a puny little 19-year old girl, am capable of constructing the frame of a house. So why are we so freaking impotent as a nation? Why are we so wimpy and squeamish? I'll leave that for you to answer (even though I'm probably just preaching to the choir).