Because I’m a sucker, I signed up for my work’s Global Day of Service this year. I had been in retirement since 2021 when I did that terrible SURPRISE, LOG SPLITTER! hard labor disguised as “setting up the pumpkin patch for the annual Halloween event.” MMMmmm.

This is really pathetic that I am proud of myself over this at the fucking ripe old age of 45, but I signed up for this without giving a shit if anyone else from my dept was also going to participate. Todd tossed around the idea of joining me, and the old Erin would have waited to sign up until he did, but I think I am so numb lately that not even social anxiety can penetrate the Novocain-like forcefield around my listless body.

It ended up just being me and a guy from another department who signed up for this particular assignment (I kept calling it the NUN HOUSE but Henry crushed my fantasies when he said it was really just an old folks house) and even that was fine with me. I vaguely knew the guy from sporadic emails over the years regarding patent stuff that is PROBABLY TOO CONFUSING FOR YOU (j/k more like boring) so I’ll leave it at that. He emailed me the day before to ask me how I was getting there. Now, mind you, we do not interact often at all, have never met in person, etc. So I didn’t think anything of it when I said I would be driving and then his follow-up email was him asking me if I could pick him at the office!

I panicked and said YES because I wanted to be a nice colleague, etc etc etc and isn’t this what CARPOOLING is?! My issue wasn’t even the fact that I didn’t know the guy (of course I wouldn’t care about that, I’m me and you are you) but because NOW I WOULD HAVE TO DRIVE DOWNTOWN.

I DID NOT WANT TO DO THIS. So I called Henry and was all, “WHAT TO DO” and he was like, “I am busy working right now, I don’t care what you do, this is your problem” but then I ever so suavely, as I’m wont to do, made it his problem as well:

“WHAT IF, now just hear me out, YOU COME HOME AND PICK ME UP, AND THEN DRIVE DOWNTOWN AND WE GET THIS GUY, AND THEN YOU TAKE US BOTH THE THE NUN HOUSE—”

“—nursing home,” Henry mumbled.

“—AND THEN PICK US UP WHEN WE’RE DONE, TAKE HIM BACK DOWNTOWN, AND THEN BRING ME HOME.”

And of course he said yes hahaha.

Anyway, it was fine. I didn’t get a Stranger Danger sense at all, in fact, the only sense I got is that he was there to landscape and not make chitty-chatty with this dumb girl from the Conflicts department.

I’m just never happy – part of me is like LEAVE ME ALONE and then when I am in a scenario where I’m truly being left alone, suddenly my tune changes to TALK TO ME, PLAY ATTENTION TO ME, LAUGH AT MY JOKES.

(I can report that he laughed at approx. zero of my jokes. The next day, I was whining about this at work and Margie was like, “Maybe you’re just not that funny??” HEY! But no seriously, that’s more than a maybe.)

Once we arrived at the Nun House, everything was….well, fine! I have NO COMPLAINTS at all. From the old man at the front desk to the driver relaxxed to the maxx in an arm chair loudly detailing his heritage back to the medieval times (Scottish and German, in case you have a niche genealogy of strangers kink) to the arrival of our landscaping supervisor for the day (Dar, I believe was her name!), literally everyone we encountered was so friendly and casual that I felt like I had stepped into a 1970s sitcom, or you know, just a time in general where people knew how to talk to each other comfortably.

Dar told us we could either wait there, or go to the MEET AND TREAT room for coffee and donuts. I said, “I COULD EAT A DONUT” at the same time Mike (my gardening partner) said, “I’m good.”

But in the end, we followed Dar to the MEET AND TREAT room (it actually was called that and had an official sign!!), I snagged a Halloween donut from a Dunkin’ box, and then we proceeded to follow Dar to the CERAMICS ROOM but I can’t remember why we went there now. She had to get something, I don’t know – it was a full week ago at this point!

I wasn’t really hungry but I felt giddy and when I feel giddy, I want sugar so that my giddiness can be sustained for longer.

Now I will try to quickly detail the key points of the day:

• Our first task was to cut down these flowers that Dar kept referencing by…brand? name and I just stood there nodding dumbly when I had NO CLUE what she was talking about. I had to wait for Mike to grab hedgeclippers and then I followed his lead. Thank god, because I was about to do something completely different. So yeah, we had to cut down these tall flowers that were against the front of the building and then after that, Dar wanted us to start digging them up in groups of 3, and then leaving groups of 3, because they were trying an “experiment” to see if they would grow back, I can’t remember now. I was bored at this point. Anyway, Mike grabbed a shovel off her little gold cart thing and then Dar said, “OK I’m going to go to the side of the building for a minute, BRB” and I was about to say, “Oh wait, I need a shovel!” but instead just shrugged and said, ‘Eh” to myself. And then to Mike, I said, “Oh no, she left before I could get a shovel.” So then I stood there while he shoveled and made him talk to me.
• Dar came back and there was still shoveling to be done :( So I had to shovel and it was hard. I asked Henry later that day if I had ever shoveled before and he did that NO-MIRTH LAUGH-BARK and said, “I doubt it.”
• Then a NUN came out, she was the garden boss I think, and inspected our work. I really liked her and wanted her to make her proud! I also found myself trying to hide my hand tattoos lol.
• After this, we stole two bales of hay from the AUTUMNAL DECOR near the entrance and sprinkled it around where we the remainder of those flower things were. Someone tapped on a window above my head and I looked up to see another nun waving and smiling at me! IT WAS SO EXCITING! Not so exciting that I felt obliged to blog about it right away, though. Still took a week, lol.
• I uncovered peanut shells in my flower-cutting  travels and laughed, “Looks like someone here feeds the squirrels!” and Dar sighed exhaustedly and said, “Yeah, and I’ll tell you who it is!” I guess it’s one of the volunteers in the cafeteria. She gives the peanuts to the residents because they like to feed the squirrels (my kind of Elders!) and Dar said she goes to this broad, “Well, you know how you like *INSERT SOME BRAND NAME FLOWER* that are in the front?” and the broad said, “Yeah” so Dar shouted, “WELL THEY’RE NOT GOING TO BE THERE IF THE SQUIRRELS KEEP DIGGING – STOP FEEDING THEM!” I was like, “OH HAHAHAHAH you would hate to live by me then” and I told her about my Buddys and Mr. Gray Guys and she goes, “OK, I’ll tell you what I told her — STOP!!!” and she SHOUTED it in my face, but then she started laughing and said, “I’m just kidding!” and I was like, “Oh, hahaha” while clutching my peanut shell pearls.

I HELPED DO THIS.

• Then we went to the courtyard which I thought was going to be my favorite area until I found out that we were doing the worst of all of the jobs, which was WRAPPING SAPLING TREE THINGS so that the deers won’t eat them. I had NO IDEA what this entailed even after she explained it to us. I mean, I honestly could not picture this in my head AT ALL but Mike started grabbing stakes and immediately went to work while Dar was unwrapping a giant roll of netting stuff. I won’t get into it, but we had to do this to like 8 trees or something and I sincerely did the bare minimum with this. I just pretended like my role of cutting the net was super important and took way longer than it had to. Mostly because every time I tried to do the stake part, Mike would come over and say, “No no, you need this to be away from the tree more” and then he would pull it out of the ground and reposition it, so I was like THEN YOU DO ALL OF THEM.
• I admitted to Dar that I had no idea what she wanted us to do until after I saw them start the first tree and she laughed. “Wow, you really meant it when you said you don’t do yard stuff.” Yeah man. I wouldn’t lie about that, lol.

• The last part we did was back in the front, where we pulled out the ceramic decorations from among the flowers. I was good at that part.

I looked like a shrub here but I don’t care, it was a day to remember, lol. I got kind of dirty a little bit!

I took a picture of Dar when she wasn’t looking – I wanted a picture of all three of us but then she was like, “OK, I’ll take your picture together” and like, OK thanks but that is not what I wanted :( Anyway, I feel weird about posting Dar’s picture here since I took it from my hip like a creep so you will just have to use your imagination. I also blocked out Mike’s face because maybe I’m getting overly cautious in my old age but I am so nervous about posting about work in general, let alone the face of someone who works there but not actually with me, you know?

And then Henry came to pick us up when Mike was talking about his radio hobby thing and how he has a club that just became a 501-something and was interested in seeing if he could do something with that at the nun house and I was like, in my head, “I am also interested in doing more stuff here” LIKE CERAMICS because that is what Dar’s sister does there and Dar helps her and told us (me, specifically!) that we should come back sometime and help out with that and I would love that. I told her about how my mom and I used to take ceramics classes back in the late 80s at a place called KIRSTINGS CERAMICS and I loved it even though I hated the KIRSTINGS (the husband, Lynn, was an asshole) but then suddenly one of my mom’s friends was like, “I want to go too” and instead of all of us going, this turned into A GIRLS NIGHT I guess and I was left behind, where I would fight with my dad and brother Ryan and I started to dread CERAMICS NIGHTS because of that. I mean, I didn’t tell Dar ALL OF THAT, like how the time my dad and I got in a fight on St Patricks Day and he threw a fork at me and the tines went into my knuckle happened on CERAMICS NIGHT, but I gave her the gist of it and she was like, “OH! Well, then you should definitely come and do ceramics with us then!” And I felt seen.

I FELT SEEN.

Then Henry drove us back downtown in silence, and after dropping Mike off we hit accident-traffic and Henry was SO PISSED because he needed to get back to work and once again I was ruining his life, lol.

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