reverend plays on the ugly organ

Today I volunteered for five hours at a arts festival for Earth Day. I was in a tent helping kids roll water soluble (thank God) ink onto their styrofoam drawings so that they could successfully press the image onto a pendant. I was helping out my friend, whose parents are both arts educators and whose dad is involved in the Bowker Creek Initiative- which is looking to create better management of the watershed of Bowker Creek, which runs primarily underground from UVic to Oak Bay, making a vast detour through Cedar Hill. By underground I mean under infrastructure.So while I was explaining to Oscar, the wily seven year old whose mother thought it might be "fun" to sign her kid up to volunteer for this thing, that if he applied more layers of ink to his styrofoam he would be wasting the ink, I was also learning a thing or two.
My friend's entire family was there: both her parents, aunt, two brothers, boyfriend... and they were all so nice to each other! We were all stuck under these tents in the pouring rain and all I could think was that first of all my parents would never sign up to do anything like this, and second of all if they did we would end up strangling each other to death, in front of the children. I got brownie points with the mom because I had brought a couple of whole carrots and hard boiled eggs for lunch, and because I could identify the music being churned out by the onsite cover band as Van Morrison.

I wore a name tag around that read "Darla" all day. I also got a ride home from her brother, whose name tag read "Swain" who had "crazy eyes" according to your definition, Laura. As I was getting out of the car her dad handed me this envelope, and I didn't think anything of it, since people always give you cards for volunteering. But when I opened it inside the house $50 slipped out. As honorarium for my dedication, card says. 

Anyway, today has been pretty decent.