CASA in the casa?

During the four days I had off from work I wallowed, I waxed, and I waned. On one of the more waxy days I contacted my local CASA office. This is something I thought about doing when I lived in Massachusetts and California but hadn't gotten to it somehow.

Yesterday I received an email about my inquiry. This line made me laugh:

Do you have some flex in your schedule?

Flexibility? At this job? For such an honorable activity? Yeah right. But I can do the application and if I pass muster then I will do the training. I don't know what the future holds and this is something I want to do so why put off these steps. No reason at all. The most daunting part is the 36 hours of training: 6-9pm on Mondays and Wednesdays and three hours on Saturdays for the month of March. I checked the work calendar I emailed myself the first week on the job and I don't think any of the events fall on the training days. Of course who knows for sure if I will still be in March. Or I could be there and I will still be doing things to move myself in a forward direction.

Way back in about 1994 or so I trained with Massachusetts Department of Social Services to become a volunteer foster care case reviewer. Since I working at the Smith College School for Social Work I didn't expect a hassle for using my lunch hour, give or take, to do this activity. I didn't get a hassle either. It was not an easy volunteer experience, many of the cases broke my heart, caused an internal wrestling to find the "right" answer, which of course was really only the best answer at that given moment. Sometimes it was inspiring. When I finally ended my service there, which wasn't too long before I left the area in 2001, I felt good about it but knew I had only contributed a drop in the bucket. But a drop is still one that wouldn't be there unless someone had stepped up. Volunteering with CASA would allow me to once again put a drop in the bucket. It's a small drop but a worthy one.