I recently met 20 new angels …..maybe saints, not sure how to tell the difference.

It’s been a long, way-too-hot summer here in Sacramento.

Couldn’t go outside for longer than a few minutes during the many triple-digit-days.

And just as bad as the heat keeping us inside, our furry-four-legged-pal, Mr Lincoln was on seven different medications around the clock for a month, making it pretty tough to stray far from home even in the air conditioned car as it was almost always time for another medication.

Oh, and the final straw is when my husband whom I call “Dewey,” deserted me a couple times a week to work in the local library because he got bored with retirement.

Put that all together and that’s how  I got a case of cabin fever!

I’m no longer into household stuff; cleaning, cooking or baking…..done with that.

My domestic-duties time has expired.

Hobbies?  

My sewing machine is still up in the spare room but I’ve sewn all I’m gonna sew and I meant to learn to knit or crochet (don’t know the difference) but, just never got into it.  

I bought the knitting needles once and a thing of yarn but it ended up in the big yellow Viet Nam Vets Bag.

I began a cross-stitch at least 15 years ago.  

It also took a trip in the yellow bag…..half done.

  

I didn’t really want a job like Dewey, that’s too much of a commitment.

Not into shopping any more because I’m suppose to be unloading stuff not bringing more in, right?

But, I needed something.

I guess I could go hang out at the library and spy on Dewey while he worked.

Gee, that sounds exciting, huh?

Instead, I volunteered to help at the local Food Bank every Monday morning.  

I had no idea what this “job” entailed but last Monday I found out.

First I had to find the place.  

It was on the other side of town, along the tracks in an area full of big warehouses that all looked the same.

I was born with zero direction genes.

NONE!

Take me around the block a different way and I’m lost.

That part of life hasn’t been fun…..always being or getting LOST.

And Siri?

I hate that woman.

All she ever tells me is to take the nearest turn around.

She can get me so confused I have to pull over and CRY!

But after a few wrong turns and damn determination, I found the place.

OK, so I DID pull into the wrong parking lot but that was an easy remedy.

After parking (in the right lot) and getting out of the car, I walked up to the warehouse.

The first thing I saw were large trucks backed-up to a loading dock and next to them a door that said nothing, not COME IN, not KEEP OUT but, there was a poster next to the door that had just one word…..HUNGER. 

Bingo!

But, before I put my hand on the knob, premature worry set in…..

Please don’t let the door be locked…..then where would I go…..in with the trucks? 

I didn’t know.

But, a turn of the metal knob and I was in.

It was a small waiting area with the typical receptionists sliding glass window and a sign-in sheet on the counter.

A couple of chairs on one wall and an office with an open door.

There was no one behind the glass window.

Now what? 

I walked over to the office door and kinda peeked my head inside.  

A woman was at her desk, I interrupted and introduced myself.

A big smile took over her face.  

This was Mary, the woman I talked with on the phone a week earlier. 

She’d sent me a volunteer application and pretty much “hired” me over the phone, sight unseen.    

She had a huge welcome smile on her face and thanked me for coming.

Wow, how nice would that make jobs if every day your boss greeted you with a smile and a thank you?    

As we walked toward the area I’d be working in, she she explained the entire process from the food arriving as donations to repackaging and boxing it out to be distributed. 

The closer we got to the wide open area of the warehouse, the louder the music became.  

It was Steven Tyler himself, belting one out with Aerosmith.  

OK, I thought, this is gonna work for me……music, GOOD music…..and loud!

This is the way to work…..a boss that greets you and thanks you for coming, rock music blaring from the work area and blue jeans and tennis shoes.

After a brief history of the Food Bank, Mary turned me over to Rex and he is indeed the king of the warehouse and another awesome, friendly smiling face.  

Rex walked me around the pallets stacked with donated boxes of food and explained that they had to be opened and everything taken from those boxes and organized into even bigger boxes according to what they were; cans, cereals, jars, carbs, family-sized things, drinks, candy, household items even animal food and cat litter. 

The goal was to empty the smaller boxes and sort into the bigger boxes.  

It took me just a short time before I was groovin’ with everyone else.  

I had a few questions,  and there were answers and guesses from the other volunteers.  

Soup in a box?  It’s not a can, so where does it go?

Opening and sorting the smaller boxes into the bigger boxes took about an hour.

That ended up to be fairly easy and I thought we were done.  

Wrong!

Rex then directed me to stand between two huge boxes, one containing all sorts of cereals and the other jars of anything and everything.

And assembly lines began.  

A box with 10 canned items would arrive in front of me.

My job was to add one cereal and 2 jars of whatever I grabbed and then move it along to the carbs and family-sized guy standing next to me. 

I wasn’t that simple for me.  

I couldn’t just grab 2 jars and put them in box and move it on.

It had to be good stuff.  

The jars box had things like olives, mayonnaise, mustard, catsup, boxed soup, peanut butter, jellies and much, much more.

I had visions of kids on my mind.

I had to make sure that the cereal I put in was a nice big box of something kids would like and then 2 jars of something else they’d like.

What kid wants a box of Shredded Wheat and then a jar of hot peppers and a thing of catsup?

Visualize…..A box of food arrives to a needy family and they get all excited only to open it and find catsup!

Nope, I’m not doin’ that!

My boxes had fun stuff in them and besides that, if there was room in that box, I squeezed one extra little thing in there. 

Every once in a while a little lift truck would come by and dump more cereal into my big cereal box.

I knew I was never gonna see the bottom.

Remember that famous clip from I Love Lucy when she was working on the candy assembly line?

ME!

We did that for about another hour.

Again to some awesome music.

Most of these working Angel-Saints were my peers…..retired seniors. 

I loved looking around and seeing heads boppin’ to the beat and even a few people dancin’ in place in front of their big boxes.

And then someone yelled…..”that’s it.”

I realized there was just no way those big boxes could all get packed.  

It must just be an ongoing day after day thing.  

A large cooler with cold water bottles was rolled in and everyone grabbed one.

Fork lifts were transporting the boxes we packed onto the big trucks on the loading dock.  

The trucks would then take them to different areas where the boxes of food would be shared with the way too many hungry, needy people we have today.

That was it.  

Two hours every Monday morning volunteer experience.

I had to lie on an ice-pak for 2 more hours when I got home but, if I was gonna have a backache, that was a good reason to have one.

Like my usual self, when I bite, I bite big so just a Monday thing wasn’t enough for me…..oh no, I had to find something for Tuesdays and Wednesdays and I did but…

well, you know……that’s another story!