I (again) didn’t sleep well last night. I only had two coughing episodes, one at 2:00 a.m. and one at 6:00 a.m. I got up when I started coughing at 2:00 a.m. because I did not want to further disturb Pete. I woke him up when I started coughing at 6:00 a.m. because I wanted to talk, not about anything in particular but just about things going on in my head. Sometimes we converse, but not this morning. The only good thing about cold-induced insomnia is that I’m tired when I go to bed at night. I do think that I sleep quite soundly for a few hours. Then the fun begins.

I will not sleep well tonight. It’s early in the evening and I’m wired. It was a PRODUCTIVE day. I distributed books and then headed on over to the Mat-Su School District warehouse where I unpacked three pallets of books and repacked them in boxes and put them in carts. Most of these were children’s books. In the past, the books have mostly been young adult.

I have forged a good working relationship with Angela Anderson, who is the warehouse manager. She had a fellow take two pallets, with a forklift, off the topmost scaffolding shelf and put them in an area that was easy to work in. I had room to move around, and access to the carts, upon which I placed the majority of the boxes of books.

The warehouse – it’s like Costco, but smaller. The walls are covered with insulation and plastic, and the orange scaffolding is five layers high. And like Costco, the warehouse has no windows. Most of the time, there are more boxes on pallets on the scaffolding than there are boxes on pallets on the floor. This time, there were more boxes on pallets on the floor. In other words, the warehouse seemed to be more disorganized today than previously.

Angela has always seemed to be on top of it, with today being no exception. She made sure that I had plenty of boxes and caught sight of the teaching books – Decodable Readers, telling me that there were schools that wanted these particular books.

I was glad to be working alone, in a quiet environment, and not having to answer BLBP volunteers’ questions. I found myself wondering if I could work in this place – I do enjoy the sorting and repacking aspect of the job. However, I could not work in a place without windows. Also, the context would make this job seem onerous. I would not be in charge, and my job would involve getting books to area schools, and maybe reassigning them to other schools. The one perk is that I’d get paid a decent wage and have benefits and retirement.

I never used to care about having a job that provided benefits and retirement. Now I care. Finally, I’m an adult. This was a long time in coming. And sad to say, it’s going to be short lived.

Next: 329. 12/3/24: Darkness, What Gives?