I have been feeling sort of self-centered lately, what with all of my focus on my new apartment and my new job and my scary good baseball team. And, when I started thinking about it, I realized that since I moved to New York I really haven't done any of what we used to call "service projects" back in my Girl Scout/National Honor Society/Kappa Phi days. Even in the year right after I graduated from OU, when I wasn't directly involved with those entities anymore, I taught Sunday School (and with nine 7th grade boys, 4 with ADD or ADHD, in class of 12, let me tell you that was a BIG service project). So when the Sarah Lawrence Young Alumni group sent out an email about signing up for New York Cares Day, I went ahead and signed up.

This is actually a cool thing, which I wanted to do last year, but it turned out to be on a bad weekend, school-wise. Basically, New York Cares the organization gets people together to go and clean up/paint/fix New York City Public Schools. In my new neighborhood, I am about 2 blocks in every direction from a public school, and while they aren't in awful shape, they are pretty old, and seriously overcrowded, which means a lot of wear and tear. And of course anything that's not a health hazard doesn't get much attention because the budgets are so tight. Since I was lucky enough to go to very nice public schools, none of which were over 25 years old (and some of which were less than 5 years old) , I feel like the least I can do is help clean up some old ones.

Part of the goal of New York Cares Day is not only to clean up the schools, but to raise enough money that all the supplies and stuff required to pull it off are paid for. So, NO PRESSURE, but if anyone wants to put in $5-10, click here[link disabled]. And just ignore those donation buttons that suggest $100 or more. Those must be for the investment banker volunteers. Thanks for listening!