A series of entries designed to capture the ongoing adventures of NINA! See how we came to be where we are today, and follow along as we enter the new century of social media!
Page: 19
This is the best way possible to give a sense of the volume of items we’ve been able to purchase for the students at West Middle. The TeacherDollars grant has made a substantial difference for the students at West Middle, as well as for the teachers and staff there.
If it looks a little brighter than usual, that’s because the loading dock door is open.
Boxes are still coming, but we’ve started to bump into holiday shoppers competing with us for items on the teachers’ wish list. Quite understandably, Amazon has limited the amount of certain popular items, but it has slowed orders down to a crawl.
Also, I’ve noticed that the quality of the corrugated cardboard boxes has declined of late. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a shortage!
We brought the latest shipment up to Veeder Place today. The benches in front of our pallets, and the wood furnishings in the background, are Fresh Start Pallet Products creations. They paint their pieces out on the loading dock in that tent there in the back. And I should add that the unpainted pallets belong to Fresh Start, too – they’ve very graciously let me borrow them while we continue to order more books for West Middle.
The blue pallet is ours – it came with that shipment we received directly on the loading dock.
The Hartford is currently at work upgrading its windows.
I thought it would take more than two days to need the third pallet, but there you have it. And as you can see, we have a fourth on standby.
And we have a third one set aside, just in case.
We’ve gotten through most of the school supplies, so now we’re focused more exclusively on books. It is surprisingly difficult to get things delivered to Veeder Place – we rarely even try anymore – so the books, which will be arriving in multiple small shipments, will be visiting my home before heading up to the Veeder Place loading dock.
Why not have the teachers come to my house, or just take them straight to school? First and foremost, because my house fills up before it’s practical to ask the teachers to take time out from teaching to come get boxes. Second, there’s the pandemic, of course, and it’s best we minimize the number of times we see each other. And then finally, the most direct route between my house and West Middle is closed! It will be, too, for at least the next year. Go figure.
The loading dock seems like a great system for transferring boxes to the teachers from West Middle. Not only is it really simple to hand the boxes over, it keeps us socially distant.
Along with school supplies and books, we also purchased masks for the students, faculty and staff emblazoned with the school logo. The masks were prepared by ARM in Manchester, which handles the school uniforms for the school.
We’ve taken over a spot on the Veeder Place loading dock. These boxes represent two separate deliveries: the brown boxes on top came from UPS today, and the white boxes on the bottom were delivered by a trailer truck right up to the loading dock door. I think we may use this spot more regularly.
