I cleaned the dirtiest, most shit-filled basement since joining All Hands Volunteers last month doing flood recovery work. Since it was the last day of the project, it was nice to end on something rather epic. Unfortunately, it's been a couple of days and I still can't even think about corn kernels without gagging. And rather more unfortunately, there were three kids under 8 years old at the house living in abject squalor and all I could do was mop and bleach their basement, when what I really wanted to do was to move them into another house, one that wouldn't reflood the second someone flushes a toilet. At lunch, I wrote a note to my girlfriend who was leading another team at another house, a note that the nice staff member delivering coffee to us then agreed to pass to her. After work was a really, really long shower, and then a celebratory end-of-project party at a local dive. Valentine's was overshadowed by the work we're doing here ending.