Charity Pains

Wednesday and Friday mornings I volunteer at my local public library. They host several stories times for families and daycares each week. After they read the story, they have a little craft to put together. My job as a volunteer is to cut out and prepare all the pieces needed for each craft project.

Today my job was to cut out 170 circles of black and orange paper in 4 different sizes. The 1" size was easy. I got to use the die cutting machine. It was even easy to make the littlest circles with a hand-held hole punch. But the 1/2" circles? Those were painful. Literally. 

The woman in charge of story time crafts was kind enough to bring her own punch from home for me to use. The only problem? It was seriously ancient. She did warn me about it being temperamental. I thought I could handle it just fine. The process of using it went a little like this...

"Okay, so if I hold it upright it's pretty easy to use."
"This won't be that hard."
"Grrr... it's jammed up."
"I probably just held it funny. It's fine now."
"Okay, seriously..... it's jamming more than it's working..."
"Seriously?! I'm going to scream soon!"
"This is really starting to hurt my fingers!"
"Now my wrists hurt too."
"I'm getting carpal tunnel here!"
"I'm seriously getting carpal tunnel and I have 120 of these stupid circles to punch out still!"
"It's okay... I'm getting carpal tunnel, but it's for charity."
"STUPID CIRCLE PUNCH!!!!!!!"
"It's for charity........It's for charity.......It's for charity......."

Needless to say, I was overjoyed when I was finished punching out 170 orange circles. That's when I looked down the checklist and saw, to my dismay.... 170 1/2" black circles...

Let's just say, I bet you can imagine how that went. But hey--it was for charity! So it was totally worth my aching fingertips and prematurely aged wrists. :D

- - Happy Crafting! - -