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Having already come through 10 days of strenuous physical labor in helping my seller pack and move, my body screamed for mercy at 6am on Saturday morning - this was the day that I was scheduled for voluntary service to Habitat For Humanity on their Homes For Heroes program in San Juan Capistrano, CA.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but as I dragged my aching body through the shower, I thought of all the reasons why it was not!  Top of the list was the high cost of gas - I mean San Juan is a L-O-N-G drive from Signal Hill by today’s standards.

Still,  I dressed in my black ‘Women’s Council of Realtors’ T shirt and pants, put on my heavy socks and good walking shoes, picked up the cooler and work gloves that my husband had prepared for me and I was off!

As I pulled into the construction site, all my objections evaporated, as I beamed from ear to ear and gave the thumbs up to the volunteers assembled - all of us ready to put in a days work for our Heroes!

Oh, yes,  there were some strong brawny guys there and obviously a good few who had construction experience, but this work force was made up largely,  by women, among them a young slip of a girl (perhaps 18 years of age), who looked like she’d be better suited to watching surfers at the beach. NOT!

We were given the safety and pep talk and divided into groups: ladders and high work, heavy tools and wood construction. I ended up on wood construction, although I had a pang of regret at not being able to wield those big power tools, which would have been my preference.

My first job was to help unload the lumber and help to take it to the various work stations.  Then we moved the roof trusses - 10 per unit, into position.

The first floor of the two units was aleady constructed (each unit consisted of a three-bedroom and a four bedroom home, with one common wall and double garage - each home to have two bathrooms) and we headed up the stairs to our ’site’.  One crew passed the lumber (1 x 4’s, 2 x 4’s and 4 x 4’s) to a crew upstairs, another crew took the lumber to the area to be built and we were given the plan: we would pre-build a wall frame for the outside wall of bedroom 4.

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