Garden shifts are starting to feel less long. I guess my body is getting used to doing four hours of manual labor in the sun. Good work, body.

After much investigation, I have discovered that tidying Degania's library and creating classroom spaces is most likely to fall under the Child Environment hours budget, or ChEnv. The ChEnv budget, as you might imagine, is fairly small. I have therefore decided to use my new member hours on this worthy project.

"What are new member hours," you ask? Every new member here gets 52 hours of their very own-- like a personal budget of hours. We can spend them on training ("I'll train you to milk cows, but you'll have to use your new member hours because we don't have the hours in our budget"), on getting involved in a project with a small budget (like shelving library books), or on your very own project. One of the other new members wants to spend her hours on constructing bat houses. I'm spending mine on constructing learning spaces.

It looks like the back bedroom will become my classroom space instead of Rick's; the older boys seem uninterested in continuing their enrollment in Unicorn School. Man, the back bedroom is such a good space. So pumped.

I had my first K shift on Thursday night. It was less terrible than I had been led to expect. The K shifts are very carefully doled out-- everyone has to do one per week unless they have a medical exemption. This fact alone made me think they must be terrible. Not so! There were three of us working. I handled the steam table, which involves putting the leftovers in containers and labeling them, then scrubbing down the steam table itself. I also swept and mopped. The other two folks did all the dishes. This worked out wonderfully. I hate dishes, and they seemed excited that I was willing to do the steam table. Due to a quirk in the labor assigning system, I had my second K shift on Friday night. (Two nights in a row!) I strolled in and said I was happy to do the steam table, which my coworkers seemed quite happy about once again. I think I know what my job is going to be on K shifts.