life changing

I've been seriously thinking that this will be my last year of subbing. It has been a good job for me and I have enjoyed being back in the classroom, especially the autism room. But I want to have more time for walking and riding my bike. I want to have more time for reading and being lazy around my house. I want to volunteer my time doing something else. I might become a tour guide at the old state prison. I've always enjoyed true crime.

years of service

At braille this morning some of the ladies received little silver pins for their years of service. I knew that I would not receive one as I have only been volunteering at this for two years and then only as a substitute for awhile when one of the regulars was out of town or having surgery or something that prevented them from making and putting together little books about God. We do this assembly line style and use plain white paper which we sandwich between steel plates and run through an old wooden machine to make the raised dots and then these pages are put together with plastic bindings. These braille books are then sent to a small town in California to be distributed all over the world. There are six of us in our little group and we work and talk and joke together. I am the only one with a tattoo.

volunteering

Today I worked at a local church making braille books for blind second-graders. There were six of us in a small room. Four volunteers took over the task of loading paper into metal jackets, running these through an ancient braille machine, removing the metal jackets and stacking the pages into booklets, and then binding a front and back cover to each book. My task was punching the holes in each page in order to go through the binder. I've actually had experience doing this; as a teacher I put together many kid-made books for my classroom. After binding each book, Mildred signed  Lutheran Braille Workers on the back cover. We made thirty-six books, each with 18 pages. It was about God and forgiveness. These books are shipped to California where they are then distributed all over the world. Afterward we had lunch at Panera Bread, talking about our families and generally solving the world's problems.