Open Door with Liz and Methodist w/Barb and maybe Linda, and clients

June 27, 2023: Well today was a day of an incredible amount of volunteering as a translator. Stupidly I didn’t write any of this earlier in the day, even though I had a lot of time and I had my computer with me. Ok so to start with, I randomly woke up at 4:30 this morning, and went back to sleep, setting an alarm for 5am. Then I took my meds at 5am with a cup of vanilla yogurt for 11g of fat. I decided to just leave to get to my Open Door shift an hour early, since I wasn’t scheduled at Methodist today. So what I did is I was driving to Open Door, and I was driving by Methodist, and I just decided to stop in there anyways for a couple minutes. It actually turned out that they were having a quite important meeting today, where they were talking about everything we’d have to do in the morning on the 11th, because they’re going to have to re-register every single client then, since they have to do that once a year. What happened was during the morning meeting, I talked to the people there a lot about the differences between the two food shelves, and the photo I have there is just of a lady named Barb and someone who I think might be named Linda pointing to stuff we’re going to have to do. So it’s kind of good I stopped by for a few minutes. I did, however, tell them that I had a different place that was expecting me at 10am, so I left a little earlier than the rest of them would have. For the 11th, they’re going to start re-registering everyone at 9am. I asked why my shift was wasn't til 12:30pm that day, and they said they were making sure that there would be Spanish-speakers there in the afternoon too. Frankly, I’m kind of considering coming in for both the morning and afternoon shift, even though I’m not scheduled for it. Then I left to go to my 10am Open Door shift, which I got to a few minutes early still. I told Wendy there that I was planning on taking my meds at 5pm, and she remembered the two hour thing and said I shouldn’t eat other food past 3pm then. She also checked that I'd brought some food with me, which I had. I told her that I might just stay the entire day because I didn’t want to drive home and waste gas. I also told someone how technically my income would let me qualify for food stamps, but I don’t need extra food because I get so much at the two food shelves I volunteer at. Today, for example, Open Door had leftover pizza and also Bruegger’s Bagels. I had a bagel with some honey walnut cream cheese. Wendy also helped me get a pot of coffee started, which I only needed help with because I usually use a pour over, which I told her too. At Open Door today, there were literally 30 voice mails, which is more than I’ve ever seen there. Honestly I spent almost all of my time on the voice mails, and I even registered a couple new Spanish-speaking clients on the phone. The Mexican volunteer Lourdes helped me a bit. I also talked to Lourdes a bit about the Methodist food shelf situation with re-registering the clients, and I also showed her the photo I took of the clients at Methodist waiting, which I only took because I knew I was heading into Open Door and I wanted to show them how many Spanish-speaking clients Methodist had. Later on I also showed that photo to Liz as well. Liz also stayed at Open Door the whole day. Oh and she also invited me to a concert on the night of the 21st, which tragically I cannot attend because I’m going to be at the cabin, which I told her today. It would have been a “rock urbano” concert from Veracruz, México. She said they’ll be others like it in the future, so it’s not like it’ll never happen again. I also had some great conversations with Liz, which is part of the reason I took another photo with her today. When I did it, she told me that I’ve never sent her any photos of us, and that I’m keeping them just for me. I said, “and for my therapist, who I’m seeing tomorrow.” But yeah, I will send her the photos now. In addition, Liz and I talked about relationship stuff a bit, and she said she’d like to get me out of my Ecuadorian history. Oh and I should also mention that a bit before that conversation, I also tried to take my meds at 5pm. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the box in my fanny pack, so I grabbed an extra from my car, which made me take it at 5:03pm, not 5pm. Then after I did that, I actually did find the case in my fanny pack, so good to have not lost it at least. I took the meds with a lamb vindaloo Indian meal that I’d brought, that had 16g of fat, so I didn’t finish it completely. Oh and another thing that happened today is that Jason, the Open Door CEO, called me the “best volunteer ever,” since I have my Spanish and my photography skills and I use both use of those things for them. Oh and I also during the day, told Liz about going to Methodist before Open Door, and the stuff that was happening there. The other interesting thing is that today, Owen actually asked me if I could help at Open Door on the 11th since Sean and Liz will be on vacation and he doesn’t know any Spanish. I told him that I could do it in the night, but definitely not in the morning because of the Methodist situation. He said they’d probably need more help in the night anyways, so that works out. Oh and I also told Liz randomly that the fact that Open Door doesn’t have ice is definitely the worst thing to ever happen to me. We then agreed that no thing that ever happens will be the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I think I said that someone would have to murder my own child in front of me for it to be worse. Anyways, that was the end of my great conversations with Liz today. She also followed me back on Instagram finally, so I guess it’s real now.