If I can stay awake while in the process of writing this dispatch. I am very tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I woke at 2:00 a.m. with sharp pains in my groin areas and upper legs. The pain was excruciating. I began moving slowly and finally got up and walked around.

I woke Pete up, not intentionally, but I was moaning and whimpering a lot. I didn’t mean to. He had been invited to a fundraising retreat out on the other side of Cook Inlet. He was on the waiting list. So he drove to Merrill Field where he was on standby. I guess that he must have made the cut because I didn’t hear from him today.

Making airplanes

We had a lot to do in a short amount of time. We had to get boxes of books from U-Haul for the hotel volunteers, and Pete had to unload the boxes of books that I’d picked up to distribute to Fairgoers. It was very late last night when we figured out that we had to do all this. We put it off until this morning and so we were scrambling to get things done this morning.

It was overcast, and a weekday, so the Fairgrounds weren’t crowded. I had a lot of books to sort, and people started coming in, so I did not get out and begin distributing books until mid-morning. I wasn’t fighting crowds; however, the books were moving slowly, most likely because of the downturn in numbers.

The afternoon was uneventful. I forced myself to get out and pass off books to families with strollers. More so than other days, people were irritable. You’d think that in coming to the fair, that they’d be happy.

My cellphone was low on juice, so I missed contacting a volunteer who was waiting outside the gate. Oh Oh. Mabel most likely will never forgive me for this.

I did see Alex who used to volunteer for us. He’s going to be working for Becky, the head gardener, starting next week. He and Callie, his fiancée, are waiting on hearing about the house that I helped them locate. It belonged to Sally Hitchock – we inherited a large number of her books and got them into the hands of appreciative readers.

Well, now I have two days off from the fair although tomorrow I am going to distribute books. I might stop filling the newspaper boxes this weekend, so that I have fewer books to take home next week. The Kid’s Kupboard people, they have a lot of free water and are really pushing it. Me, my swag is bookmarks.

After the two days off, there are the final five days on. I think overall, I am doing an excellent job getting the right books into the hands of appreciative readers. However, I feel like I could have done more if I hadn’t been spending so much time sorting, stamping, and boxing up books for the fair.

Next: 229. 8/25/25: ?