Evan Errands 2

A friend of mine named Evan is having a hard time and recently crashed his car (luckily he is OK!).  I and other NAMI folk have been very worried about him and trying to help.  Today was my turn to help!

I set my alarm for 6AM so I could leave the house at 6:15.  I didn’t even have time to check email!  Then we headed over to Evan’s place, and I took him to Project Hope which is a food pantry type place.  It was wonderful and bad all at the same time.

We were the first to arrive there, but soon after we got there, others started showing up.  It is first come first served, so everyone gets there around 7AM so that when they start handing out food and other aid at 9AM, everyone’s name is on the list.

The second person to arrive was a lady who was afraid of dogs.  She wanted to walk past me to a bench to sit down, so I showed her how I’d hold Hestia tight and wrapped my arms around her so that the woman didn’t need to have any fear of getting bitten.  The lady was very nice about being afraid of the dog, and we did little dances around the rooms as we went through everything.  She was super kind and very nice about being afraid of the dog.

At 8:30 when sign-in started, we went inside Project Hope.  This was the bad part.  A worker came over and rudely said to me “Is that a service dog?” so I said yes.  She said “You need to go over and sit in the corner in case people are afraid of dogs”.  At the time I was dancing around the room a bit with the scared woman so I just ignored her.

They brought out bread and bananas first, and we had to take them to the car.  So of course I got up and went to the car because it is my car.  Why wouldn’t I go with Evan to put stuff in my car?!  When we came back, the same mean lady started yelling at me for getting up and telling me how my dog was scaring everyone and I needed to just sit still in the corner.  I didn’t want to mess anything up for Evan, so I just smiled and sat down where I felt comfortable sitting (which happened to be in the corner).

So that part of Project Hope was pretty annoying.  I am thinking of writing them a letter about how I was treated by that person.  Luckily everyone else at Project Hope was super nice and friendly 🙂

When we went to get Evan’s food we were astonished to see a grocery cart full of food!  They said they would give enough food to last a week, well this will last a lot longer than a week!  It was awesome!  They had meat, fruit, veggies, non-perishables, organic spinach (the bananas were organic, too!).  It was all in good shape and really really awesome.  Definitely the best food pantry I’ve ever been to!  Hopefully I never need to go to another food pantry for myself, but if I do, I would definitely go to Project Hope!  Aside from the rude lady it was a great experience.

We ran some more errands after we got the food put in the fridge in Evan’s place.  I won’t give you all the boring details, but at one point we went to the DMV and I saw my friend Eli there!  They were in front of me in line!  Turns out the mom (and my friend Jessica) was at the DMV too!  But we got finished very quickly and left, so I did’t find that out until Jessica texted me.

I took Evan out to lunch at Charanda’s, which is a great Mexican chain.  I ordered two sopes, which are like corn english muffins with Mexican toppings.  It was very tasty!

Then we finished up the errands, and headed back to Evan’s place to drop him off.  It was a very productive day!  And since the day started so early, it already feels like I’ve done a lot!  Normally I don’t even wake up until 11 or 12, so it is odd for me to feel like I’ve put in a day’s work when it’s only 2PM!

I listened to The Greatest Showman very very loudly on the way home 🙂   I really love that CD!