The Home Stretch: New priorities!

Yes indeed we are in the home stretch till it is time to board the plane to the Web. I am at a point where I am unable to do anything else until a few days before. I need to ship up my food but I can't do that until the day I leave, otherwise it arrives before me, and in the past someone has been nice enough to place items in the freezer, but forgot to put the perishables in the fridge. The result was a bin of spoiled milk, cream, eggs, yogurt....you get the picture.
Of course I will go next week and ship up all the dry goods and clothes because they can sit in the bins until I arrive next Saturday. Yet I still can't go shopping for my milk and other items because I want them to be as fresh as possible. So that means I go shopping for groceries at 4 am on Saturday morning, thank Goodness that metro by my house is a 24 hour store.

Seems like no big deal to most people, but when the prices are 50 to 75% more in the Web, you want to take advantage of the great prices at home. No i am not big on milk because i am lactose intolerant, but I love fruits and veggies and would much prefer the fresh than any other kind. (thus the reason I have 3 garden beds in my yard) .

But I can't ship up fresh produce for the whole year obviously. But I do fly home at least once a month for a weekend, like in October I come home for Thanksgiving, I come with my empty suitcase and backpack, and usully fill it with the produce so I don't have to send anything through cargo.
The quality is far better than what I could ever buy on the reserve. I know that the store tries to keep costs down if they can but often that means the size and quality of the items are poorer.
So just getting a square meal while living in such an isolated because something of a task..

You start to think about many things differently when you need to have them shipped by plane. For example I love laundry day here in town. I have a clothes line outside and hang everything on it. I enjoy the freshness of items hang to dry outside.

In the Web I can only dry my clothes with the dryer. So there is a less fresh quality to the laundry as far as I am concerned. Also, I can't haul up large jugs of bleach, detergent and fabric softener, the weight of these items makes it too expensive. On occasion I have purchased these products on the reserve, but that was way too expensive. So I found that Purex has a perfect alternative, they have those all in one laundry sheets. You place one in the was and it has detergent in it, then you put it in the dryer with the clothes and it has a fabric softening strip. It cleans pretty well, but I find that the fabric softener is not enough in the sheet so I usually add an additional dryer sheet.
I know most of you are saying "so what" and I think i would have said the same if i had not had the experience of shipping my life back and forth between home and the Web. It has made me realize that something as insignificant like laundry takes on a different priority.
Most of you don't think twice when you are hungry, you open the fridge, freezer or cupboard and make a choice. For those of us lining in places like the Web, we open the fridge and as we select an item, mentally we are noting that we are down, one apple, or yogurt cup or whatever, and its on to a shopping list in the back of our heads. Priorities change in the Web. But it also makes you appreciate the little things when you are home.

Just a Little Co Operation

Well we all love it when are plans run smoothly and we can complete our tasks without a snag. Ya, in a perfect world right.

What has got me upset is the lack of cooperation I sense with my employer. I asked which unit i would be in this year as I need to get my phone hooked up. One person says they don't know and passes me off to the next person. Now theirs next person should be expecting a flurry of questions from teachers as we head into the home stretch. Yet I have sent this person several emails and they have yet to answer even one.
So to say i am frustrated is putting it lightly. I go through this every year. I am concerned as well for the new teachers because for some they are already nervous about what they will experience when they arrive in the Web, but if they are being neglected like this as well it does not make for happy employees.
I am hoping that they are not simply taking their time over this, how long would it take to email "your in this unit and last years phone number was XXX-XXXX" RIGHT! not a big deal.
It makes me wonder if anyone is listening, if anyone cares...grrrr it is so frustrating!

So in the mean time I will fuss over my packing and hope that someone answers my question sooner rather than later.

The Countdown Begins

I know as I mentioned before, in the back of my mind, I have been planniing my packing since I arrived home in June.
 But today the real countdown has started . in 29 days i will be back on the flying cigar cube of a plane and headed back to the Web for another school year. And so, I unstacked the bins in my room and began to place items (mostly dry goods right now, into the bins, knowing I will repack those bins several times before i seal them shut.
Other prepartations are underway as well. Today I got my HUGE canning pot out to make several gallons of spaghetti sauce. I will use it for lasagnas, cannelloni, manicotti and yes for spaghetti. So my house smells like an Italian kitchen at he moment, the sweet aroma of fresh basil, garlic and Valida onion hang in the air making me hungry.
There is so much too do and I am in that HURRY Up mood, but yet not wanting things to hurry too much.as I still want to enjoy being home. There are still raspberries to pick in the garden, and the beans have come in, in a week the peas will be ready to be shucked, blanched and frozen. Last but not least the potatoes will need to be dug up, and then my time in the garden will be done.
At Thanksgiving I may be home to add so manure and perhaps turn the soil, but I won't be gardening again until Goose Break in April. Yes, it gives me something to look forward to as I trek though snow that is 6 feet deep, or sent home from school because the weather has dipped below -35 and its too cold for the kids to walk to school.
Ah, yes winter the main season it seems in the Web. There are good things about it. At least when the cold weather hits there is no sand flies....
So I will be distracted daily with concerns about what I still need to get and freeze before my bins take thier journey up North. I know some may wonder why I don't just buy my food at the Northern Store on the reserve, I am here to emlighten you. I am sure many are aware that the Northern Store is pat of the Giant Tiger chain f stores. And indeed you can get fantastic deals at the "GT Boutique" aka the poorer man's Walmart, The Northern store is the exact opposite. The prices are criminal. A box of KRaft dinner (I don't eat it but) is over $3, milk for the 4L bag $15.37 (the last time I looked in 2008) At those prices it is a wonder how anyone can eat properly on the Reserve.
So I will continue to ship my food and save a bundle in the process. With the savings maybe I will take a trip to Jamaica with my #1 son...haha!