During the night, I found myself awake and thinking of that dream I had about my house in the woods. Sometimes dreams are just dreams.  Sometimes dreams are our subconscious trying to tell us something.  Maybe it’s time for me to completely forget about that life and move on.  That house will never be mine again; I will never again have a say in what happens to it.  I know this in my head, but it’s hard for my heart to accept it.

As I read over what I had written about that dream, it occurred to me that if anyone read this journal in the future they might get confused about Pete.  Pete, the township handyman, is not the same Pete that I lived with in the woods.  That Pete, tall, handsome, charming, a bi-polar narcissist, with a truly evil streak, no longer lives anywhere around here.  But he was a part of my life for nine years; and those nine years shaped a lot of who I am now, and why I feel the way I do.  But it’s time to let it go.

I wanted to be at the EMS building when the delivery arrived, so John and I left here at 11:30 to start setting up.  After looking things over, I was really glad we got an early start: the EMS building would not do: all of the EMS and fire trucks needed to be parked inside, leaving no room for what was needed.  Back at the township offices next door, Petey helped us pull long tables out of the storage closet and line them up.  We needed a way to organize the supplies and disperse them.  I just barely made it back to the EMS to intercept the delivery truck.  The driver wasn’t happy about the change in location, but I explained it was just one township building or the other.

At first it didn’t look like much, coming in a step-van, but the cases really began to add up.  There were several volunteers unloading the supplies, while I organized and gave directions where to put things.  Meats over there, veggies and fruit on this table, dry stuff over here; and a miscellaneous table in the back.

I signed the receipt and walked up and down the aisles to see what we had.  I stopped at the miscellaneous table.  My contact at GFS would get my personal thank you.  She not only included six boxes of food handler gloves, but a case each of TP, PT and tissues! I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the gross of zipper baggies, but I wasn’t going to question it.

It seemed easier to put one or two cases of something on the table, and the rest on floor underneath where it would still be easy to reach.  It was all starting to take shape, now I needed a way to hand it out.  It had crossed my mind to just give it all to the Kitchen, but that defeated the purpose of everyone having a choice of sharing it, or fixing their meals at home.  But first we needed a count on how many people were still here.

Neither Darlene nor Carolyn could agree on a number of residents; it could be as few as 50, or as many as 150; those out in the woods were more self-sufficient and prepared, and were hunkering down; likely we wouldn’t see them until Spring.  Between the three of us, we decided that all the bulk items, like the 300# of flour and yeast, the cooking oil and shortening, soup bases and the #10 cans should go to the Stone Soup Kitchen for community meals; it would be too difficult to divide that up.  Then we started selecting what it would take to feed one person one decent meal per day, then gathered one weeks’ worth. This way we could hand out one bag per person that came in, and they could always get a second meal at the Kitchen, which would be way more than most them were getting now.  This just might work.  I hope.  We will have to keep track of who came in, and when, and unfortunately this inventory room will have to be kept closed and locked except during Grocery Days.  I thought it best to let those two handle the finer details.  I had gotten the food there, I had done my job, and all I wanted to do now is go home and spend some time with my family.  I was tired and emotionally worn out.

Before leaving, I did a quick calculation: with the food here, it looked like we should keep 50 people fed for a month; 75 people obviously less time, but it was a good start.

It was a night for comfort food.  I mixed up a large chicken noodle casserole using a jar of chicken thighs I canned in the Fall, with egg noodles, one of the few remaining cans of mushroom soup, a jar of my garden peas and a mixture of cheeses on top.  With the addition of a salad, everyone was happy; though Jacob didn’t have any salad, he did eat the casserole.