a layabout Sunday

I did go to the trash-off yesterday. A couple of my students showed up, they will get their bonus points. (I offer a small - truly laughable, in the broad scheme of things - number of bonus points in my environmentally-related classes for people who do this. Usually the people who show up are people who already have an "A" in a headlock, but whatever.)

It went all right. It was cool-ish (probably a bit cool, in retrospect), not too windy, sunny. I just told myself to think of it as a very bad sort of Easter egg hunt and went to it. (I worked alongside one of my students: she had walked to the event, leaving her car at home for her husband's use, so she rode with me to the pick-up site).

We did one of the major roads in town, but out near its western end - much less traffic, much quieter. At one point an older man drove by, slowed down, rolled down his window and waved and thanked us for cleaning up. So there was that. (Probably it's less than 10% of the population that litters...but boy, do they have a big impact).

Part of the area was already clear - there are several "ranchettes" along that road, and obviously the owners kept their own frontages clear. But even with that, for a span of maybe two miles (counting both sides of the road), we filled a dozen garbage sacks. Mostly with plastic bottles. Some containing substances that were not originally placed there by the bottler, and which I tried really hard not to think about. (We did have latex gloves for protection)

I say it may have been a bit on the cool side for ideal work - this morning, my lower back was VERY sore. More than I remember it being in the past after these things. So I wonder if the cooler temperatures made my muscles tense up more. I remember being sore in this way after spending multiple hours in my office when the heat was out last winter. (And it didn't help that in church, they had the air conditioning cranked way up - though there was a reason, it was the Holy Week cantata and the choir was standing, in their heavy robes, for maybe a half-hour or so. But it was tough on those of us in the pews, who had dressed for a day of maybe 80 degrees).

So I didn't do a whole lot today. I had planned on more gardening but decided that was inadvisable given how my back felt. I did clean house a little bit but trying to scrub the kitchen floor (I couldn't stand how bad it had gotten) probably wasn't the best idea.

I did add a couple more repeats on the Butter Peeps socks (they almost certainly won't be done by Easter, but that's OK) and I also worked some on a large square shawl - the Miss Marple shawl made from a pattern reprinted from the old Weldon's. I'm almost to the point of starting to decrease for the second side of the square (and am halfway through the yarn I have, so that works out well).

Lots of talk both in church and on the local news just how bad it is in Tushka, where the biggest tornado hit. One of the women, who is a manager at a home-health firm, had photos of their Atoka office, half gone. (The good news? No one was in the building - the one employee who had been going up to catch up on late work, her husband called her and told her to come home, so she was at home in their storm shelter).

One of the local girl scout troops is collecting "hygiene kits" (things like toothbrushes and soap and facecloths) for people who are in the shelters or are having to stay with family or friends.

Once again, I guess we dodged something very bad where I live.