Habitat For Hottie

Anthony and I just returned from a nice Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans- one of my favorite cities in the U.S. I am pretty sure I gained 10 lbs. from overindulging in all things fried and drinking daily but still have amazing memories despite the fact that I puked in the sink on our last night. Even though our trip this time consisted mainly of partying and listening to great music, I was reminded of the times my family and I went to New Orleans to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity after Hurricane Katrina. Especially the time when Grace and I had the biggest crush on our Habitat for Humanity group leader. On the very first day we arrived on location at the site that we would be at the entire week, we met our team leader and Grace and I immediately got googly eyes. If we were cartoon characters, giant hearts would have popped out of our eye sockets and we would have transformed into firecrackers, floating into the air and simultaneously exploding in the sky spewing heart shaped confetti all over his head. But we are Demchaks so our cheeks just got all red and we looked down to the ground after he introduced himself to us. Since we were both single, we locked eyes after he stepped away and both knew that the competition was on. Operation: win over the hot guy in the tool belt.

Before we would get to work every morning, he would give us a brief lowdown on what we would be doing that day, what tools we would be using and who we would be paired with. He always asked if there were any volunteers to work with him and of course Grace and I would throw our hands up before anyone else. My arms are freakishly long (lucky for me) so he would usually see me first and pluck me out of the crowd of suckers (aka Grace). There was one day though when Grace got the luxury of working with him outside all day and as I watched them leave out the front door, she raised her finger under her chin and sliced it across her neck as if to say, ‘screw you sucker!’ Her eyes never left my gaze as the door slammed in my face. It was a good thing I didn’t bring my prom dress to New Orleans because I would have surely worn it the next day to work…“what, this old thing?” But sadly after a whole week of parading around like pathetic peacocks, both of our dreams came crashing down on our last day when he took us both aside to introduce us to………his fiancé. Cartoon Erin and Grace would have fallen backwards after our pupils turned to black X’s and two tombstones with broken hearts on them would have popped up in our places.