Thursday, May 26, 2011

Shipping smiles

In a sudden *whoosh* of reality, I realized that it's been far too long since I catalouged life's events online. It's not that I forgot about blogging. Someone in as desperate need as I am of a 12-step program, cannot simply "forget" to blog. In fact several times a week something happened that I would mentally note to blog about it. Inevitably once I got the computer to myself to write, my mind would be wiped as clean as a forgotten chalkboard. Meaning, there's residue lift, but not enough to formulate any words.

Someone somewhere decided that life was to dull, and to spice it up they would change all the house numbers on our street. Unfortunately this wasn't a teenage prank. As such I now have two house numbers and no mail.
Oh sure, the junk mail finds me. I'm pretty sure I could immigrate to Antartica, leave no forwarding address and I would still recieve AMAZING pre-approved credit card offers from companies I have never done business with. In some strange twist, they also manage to consistantly spell my name correctly. It's unnatural.
Of course things that I've actually requested and paid for never show up to the house. To pour salt in the wound the delivery confirmation cheerily informs me that my package has been "delivered", but my post office has no record of it ever coming to them. To say that it made me livid, would be to understate the emotions I felt. What I felt, was white hot ire and cruel bitter betrayal. During deployments and involuntary separations I have contemplated having our paycheck sent directly to the USPS. I mean, it makes sense to cut out the middle man. Let's not even bring up the amount of craft stuff I purchase online and have shipped through USPS.
Our local post office insists that it's not their fault. They haven't seen the packaged cross their facility. It's the sorting office's fault.

I muttered under my breath for days about our postal system. I thought of the exact wording of my response when they told me my packages were never in their facility. I must admit, I'm not proud of my thoughts, or the rants that I railed to my very patient husband as I wrestled with laundry. Finally I broke down and sent my husband to the post office. He came home with the expected answer and the address for the sorting facility.

The next morning I was trying to work on too many things at once when the doorbell rang. I answered the door to find the FedEx man in my porch holding this box.





I imagine the my expression looked something along these lines;



The FedEx guy looked at me nervously while I squealed in excitement. "I'm sorry." I babbled "I've been waiting for this for a few weeks. I was afraid the post office lost it!". He smiled a shakey smile that clearly indicating he thought I was losing my mind. He set the box on my living room floor and sprinted back to his truck as if we had the plague.
Granted if I had gotten that reaction while delivering a breast pump I may have had the same reaction.




I was still on my high about the breast pump arriving, and profusely thanking God that Ameda had sent the package via FedEx, when the door bell rang again. A mail carrier stood there sheepishly holding a bundle of my mail. As he handed me the bundle of packages he said "I guess these got lost with your hold. Sorry about that.".
I could have hugged him on the spot. I would have hugged him, but I didn't want to cross any boundaries and I really want to keep recieving my mail.I settled for repeating "Thank you! Thank you!" over and over like a four year old hyped up on birthday cake.
Although, in my defense, what's not to love about craft supplies and fluffy mail.