12-3-2011

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is a weird time.  Everybody knows how many days until winter break begins.  Kids are announcing the countdown when they enter the classroom in the mornings.  I try to remind them about the big picture; it’s the summer break they need to get excited about.  But it’s difficult for them to think about the summer when it is so far away.  It also doesn’t help when other teachers are so giddy about flying south for a couple of weeks.  I’m even thinking about telling the kids that there is no Santa.  I know it might break a few little hearts, but at least they won’t be so excited about the break and they could concentrate on their schoolwork.  It may seem a bit cruel, but in the long run it will be better for them. 

Sunrise out our front window- 11:15am

Getting groceries up here has been a challenge this winter.  We ordered the bulk of our food last summer.  These orders should last us for the entire school year.  We ordered a couple of hundred pounds of meat, cases of canned food, sugar, flour, etc… and most of that will last us.  The perishables are a different story.  We did an order in Oct for some items and it took over a month to arrive.  We also didn’t get everything we ordered and some items came frozen (eggs).  We order from a grocery store, Fred Meyers.  They take the order, send someone through the store with the list and a shopping cart, fill the order, and ship it.  Seems simple enough, but something broke down in their system. 

We received two shipments; one through the mail and one through a shipping company.  Their statement was that the perishables had to be shipped through the airfreight service.  This is expensive, but it does get here much faster and is kept in a controlled climate.  The problem with that was that the controlled climate was the freezer, as requested from Fred Meyer.  Nothing we ordered required freezing.  This included two dozen eggs.  Most of the order was shipped through the post office, cutting the cost of the shipping dramatically.

Our indoor porch this morning.

Most importantly, we got our toilet paper.  We were really counting on using that.  Unlike butter, I am unwilling to ration the use of toilet paper.  I don’t really want to consider how a person would ration toilet paper.  When rationing butter, you could just have butter every other day instead of every day.  Ok, butter is delicious and pretty important.  Let’s use broccoli as our example when it comes to rationing food.  But for rationing toilet paper, I don’t imagine it could work like that.   Also, I refuse to ration coffee.  I would rather go without than have only one cup a day. 

I may hold off on telling the kids about Christmas lies.  If I remember correctly, the Grinch was unfairly portrayed as someone malevolent and evil.  I’ve discussed this with Monica and she was pretty quiet on the subject.  Come to think of it, I don’t think she was even in the room when we discussed it.  Most of our conversations take place with me in the living room, talking and her not.  I find her more agreeing this way and she finds me less irritating.   Win-win.