Cleveland Ohio baby!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! Our new project kicked itself off today. We're now working for habitat for humanity, working on fixing the foundations up, or just generaly working on the inside doing drywall, fixing up cabinents or doing doors. The first day we worked, we filled up the outer area of the basement with gravel, to cover up some of the pipes for the house so they arent exposed to anything dangerous. It was pretty intense labor today, about 3 hours of straight shoveling, then a break, then onto a different site to load up some 2x4 planks, then onto a different site where we spent about another 2 hours shoveling dirt into a big hole to cover up exposed piping again, and then we were done.

The volunteers that we're working with seem to be very nice people and we get along with them really well. So far we really only worked with 2 other AmeriCorps Habitat volunteers, but tomorrow we should be working with some church groups, or other volunteers from schools around the general Cleveland area. From what I have seen today, I can say that so far this seems to be a really good project from the looks of it. Also our housing is KICK ASS!!!!!!!! We're staying in an old church that has been around for at least 100 years, which has actually really kept up well considering its age. It has a really nice sanctuary, complete with an organ thats a one of a kind. Only 3 of them exist in the entire world so there you go :D. There's also a gym with a basketball court "Which we have yet to go to", and even theater room, but no projectors. Hopefully i'll post some pictures when I get a chance, there's no wireless internet at the church, but a local coffee shop nearby has free wireless, so that's going to be my hookup from now on.

As far as team dynamics go, there's barely any guys anymore on this team. Kris is hanging out with cassie most of the time, so me and mark are left to fend for ourselves while the rest of the team "aka girls" goes and hangs out with eachother. In a way this kinda sucks but for me this is really good because i really value my personal time that i have to myself so I can make calls to people whenever I want and not get bothered by anyone else, but at the same time, there's less stuff for me to do to make myself entertained. Meh....

Anyways, more on the drama at home. My parents are now getting divorced and my mom seems to keep fucking up my dads life more and more every day. My mom has taken our finances into her own hands and has started to make really stupid decisions. One of these decisions made the interest rate on one of my dads credit cards jump from say 5%, to 20%. Hopefully she doesnt fuck our finances up so badly that they have to sell the house to pay the bills. I'm really concerned that my dad is going to go under due to everything my mom is doing, but my dad is constantly consulting his brother, grandpa and his lawyer for tips, I just pray that the world doesn't go to complete shit back in Portland because so far, thats what is happening. My mom is making up lies and slander about my dad to everyone she knows so she can get support for herself, which I believe is total bullshit. She's done this a lot in the past to people she doesn't like and because of that, not a lot of people like her. Little does she know that I actually have a pretty big influence on some of the people she knows, a bigger influence then she herself has, so i'm going to use this to my advantage soon to regain support for my dad. I think that this has to be done because there are a lot of things that need to be clarified so my dad doesn't turn into a hated man for stuff he has never done in the first place.

If it wasn't for the damn drama going on back home, i'd feel like these next 4 weeks are going to be completely awesome. But I just know that things back home in Portland are going to escalate to a point of where I don't know if I'm going to go home to my own house anymore. I definately know now that all the packing I did before I left for AmeriCorps will be in vein because all the rest of my stuff in my room is going to be packed up with out my consent of what goes where, because knowing my mom, she just cleans shit for no reason. So i'm going to have to get my dad to pack up my stuff for me which is really shitty because I don't really want anyone to even touch my stuff, but if my dads moving out, i'm moving out with him or getting my own apartment when I get back to Oregon.

Why does life have to bite me in the ass? I've been a good kid in AmeriCorps :(. I even got an Upliftment award from our unit leader. Come on!!!!!

I could use a nice bottle of Captain Morgan right now, sigh....