yes, i am living in the crazy frontier town of fort edmonton. all shipments come overland (possibly by wagon train or prairie schooner or donkey cart) and they get stuck at the trecherous mountain passes. they might not get here till the spring thaws! (dang nabbit!)

today, 12 skids of (mostly still ok) produce and dry goods arrived at my receiving doors, after having finally made it through the coquihalla pass. yes, up the coquihalla highway they traveled, and through the coquihalla pass.

we have room in the back of the grocery store for about 4 skids. 5 if we block the door to the meat freezer. it was an awkward day. full of dangerous box stacking and pushing tubs and jars and boxes of food so far onto the shelves that other stuff fell off the far side.

now our customers can all stop bitching that we only have navel and valencia oranges.
they can have their almond milk and cashew cookies, their vegan cake and eat it too.

the whole situation was made even more bizzarre and hillarious (to me) by the number of customers who were frazzled and upset by our total lack of mandarines and  plain almond milk. i loved telling them that an avalance and snow had blocked the coquihalla pass and nothing was getting over the mountians. i didn't know when the shipment was coming in. so much fun. excessive use of the word "coquihalla." so much stuff buried under other stuff. i doubt i'll see my back shelves again before tuesday.
and yet, it didn't seem to make anyone feel thankful, or lucky the way i did. here we are, it's minus 17 and it's been snowing for three days straight, and despite most of our food being driven overland through passes in the rockies, we still have ORANGES! no mandarines or satsumas, mind you, but oranges none the less. we were running low on cows milk, since it all comes from bc. but we had litres and litres of local goat milk. and cartons of tetra packed rice, soy, almond, and hemp milk. each one a miracle of modern materials science.

the customers and my coworkers somehow bitched and complained about the coquihalla highway is supposed to be an all weather road, and why couldn't the trucks get through? could they speak to a manager about it? could i go check in the back? they really like the unsweetened almond breeze milk, and they won't accept the vanilla almond breeze or the hemp bliss, or the so nice or the riza milk as substitutes.
no, the snow has blocked the pass. no, neither i nor the manager can generate anything out of nowhere just cause you'd like to bitch about it. no, he's not available, i don't like talking to you and he'd probably like it even less.
and i'm serious about us being out. it is actually my job to know what we have in stock.

i love opening all the boxes, checking their contents, sorting and shelving. it reminds me of playing with -well, you know, those little clothes fastening thingies (don't want to mention the b word again) anyway, i had a huge jar of multicoloured and variously textured ones. i would amuse myself for weeks sorting them by size, colour, number of holes, material, quantity, weight, whatever characteristics i could think of. my love of sorting is expressed in this current job. i get excited when the shipments come in. it stresses some of the other clerks out terribly. they groan and moan about having just made room to put the over stock tea, and now we have more things to sort and put away.
this sentiment is hard for me to empathise with. i love the sorting. the stacking and shelving. the hauling and carrying and carting of boxes. the larger the chaos, the greater my pleasure in facing it and organizing it.

time for bed. i must be up early tomorrow to stock all the shelves.
i love the snow in the coquihalla pass.
this makes me want to have a ho-down in a hay barn. or something.