The Whole Wide World

The last time I looked at the clock last night, it was 5-freakin-AM. I don’t know what’s up with the shitty sleep schedule, but it’s real special. I managed four hours of solid sleep and was convinced I was going to be a disaster today. Much to my surprise, that turned out to not be the case. It was a great day and I was in such a great mood that I started questioning whether I might be manic?

I had a slightly earlier than normal start at work because I get a delivery of new merchandise from our supply warehouse every other Friday. That means unloading it and bringing it in from the back loading dock first thing in the morning. It’s cold, but we move quickly and get it over with. The items that arrived on vessel at the beginning of the year come to me in batches over the course of winter for tagging and bagging. I keep some of the stuff to sell in the store this winter, but the majority gets sent back to the warehouse once I’ve processed it. I am plugging along through that process and realized today that I am doing even better than I thought at knocking it out. A huge part of that is thanks to my friends who come in and work on their breaks and days off to help with the tagging and bagging. I couldn’t do it without them and they make my quality of life so much better.

After the lunchtime store hours, the A-shift firefighters, Khani and Joe came and rallied to help me move a couple couches, chairs and a few tables into the store. I’d cleared a space a couple weeks ago to make a lounge area, but we had a big storm and ended up holding off on moving everything until today. All the furniture was in a storage mil-van next to the dorms across town, so it wasn’t exactly an easy feat. We took a break in the dorm lounge half way through to get warmed up again.

After we moved the furniture into the store, I stopped by laundry skua and got some flannel sheets to throw over the couches because, well, the couches have seen better days. The sheets are a mix of plaid and moose print, so now that those are draped over the couches, the space gives off lodge vibes. There are some paper mache animal heads in a few of the lounges around station, I am going to procure one of those and that will be the final addition to complete the lodge vibe.

At dinner, rather than sitting at the family table where I always sit, I had a one-on-one dinner date with my friend Eleni. The family table is a great winter addition, oftentimes there are over twenty of us sat together and we always have ridiculous conversations and banter, but sometimes it can be energy draining. Eleni often branches out and sits at a smaller table and tonight was my first time doing so.

The smaller table allowed us to have a nice little chat and it was just really enjoyable getting to know her a bit better. Eleni’s Dad is first generation Greek, with all of his side of the family in Greece. Earlier this week, she had a real scare, when her 98-year old Greek Nana swatted at a fly and took a tumble, which resulted in a broken hip. Thankfully, she is on the mend now, but it was a very scary and stressful ordeal, especially being all the way down here. We trauma bonded over that as I shared the story of my own Nana who also fell and broke her hip while we were on a family holiday on the island of Mallorca a few years ago.

After dinner, I opened the store for the evening hour and the new lounge space made its debut. What a fabulous debut it was, too. It’s the eve of the community’s monthly two-day weekend, so we were fairly busy with people buying up their rations and snacks for the long weekend. All the seats in the lounge space were occupied for the duration of the hour with people chatting, coloring and Michael even brought his din-din in and dined in the new lounge.

At seven o’clock we tuned into the town’s radio station for Power Hour with Jess. She does an on air interview with a different community member each week and tonight’s guest was, Karen, our winter site manager. With the volume up and all the new seats occupied, there was a palatable buzz of energy in the store and it felt good. I’m talking be still my heart, this is my community, good. I am grateful to Garrett, for insisting that I rally our fam-bam to sort the furniture out and create the gathering space. When he and I first went on the hunt for furniture and found it buried in the back of the mil-van’s I was dismissive, not wanting to put anyone out, but he insisted it wasn’t a big deal and that as a team we could knock it out in no time. He was right.

I think that heart-so-full feeling was a culmination of all the day’s events, which all included community. That’s the happy theme of the day, community. Sean and Shelby lingering around for a chat after dropping off the supply delivery in the morning. The A-shift firefighters, Khani and Joe helping move furniture despite it being -40F out in the afternoon. Capped off with a full lounge of friends starting their two-day weekend in the store. Community at it’s finest and a real sense of belonging. It doesn’t get better than that. ❤