Of Mail and Mothers

On Monday, Julie posted a package to Grandma Connie for Mother's Day. She did this early in the morning, before the post office was open, using one of those post-it-yourself machines in the post office's lobby.  Our Fans who have used them before will know that you put in the zip code of your mail's destination, and the machine spits out a label with the town, state, and zip code on it, which you are meant to affix to your package (obviously) and complete with the rest of the mailing address (again, obviously).

Perhaps you already see where this is going, Fans.

Julie got her label, slapped it on the box, handed it to someone called forth from the back by a buzzer (the package drop door was stuck), tossed her receipt in a garbage can in the lobby, and went on her way. When she set down her bag at work, her eye fell on the Sharpie marker she'd put in it to finish addressing Grandma Connie's package, and realized that she hadn't finished addressing Grandma Connie's package. The one with the one-of-a-kind and irreplaceable plate with Clara's handprint turned into a bird in its center. (Fans who've been to the Raleigh House or the White House will recognize in this description the plates Julie has been making since the bambini were wee bambini, and some Fans might know that Grandma Connie has a weekends for all things ceramic.)

Julie wasn't feeling well (she perhaps ought to have stayed at home that day), and she was posting all sorts of things--a pair of pants going back to Gap, photo mailers to the great aunts and Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles, thank you notes for birthday gifts given to Clara. . .She was distracted, in other words, but still.  For the love of all things holy, Fans.

People like to rail against the US Postal Service. Julie has never been one of those people.  She, in fact, has always been a huge, huge US Postal Service Fan. You pay practically nothing and they ferry letters from home to home, post cards to campers, magazines! Birthday cards! Holiday cards! Valentines! Wedding invitations, birth announcements. . .and that's just the fun stuff. And, she's lived on walking delivery routes the past two years. In Minnesota, how many days is walking to deliver the mail a
pleasant task? She's got nothin' but respect for the USPS.  So she was hoping karma would mean her package would somehow make it to Grandma Connie.

To help karma out though, she called the post office.  They did not pick up.  (We can only assume they were too busy delivering mail.)  So she went by the post office on her way home, made like a suspicious person and dug through the trash for the receipt she'd tossed--which she found!--with the tracking number on it and then explained to the postal workers the whole mess she'd made in her distracted haste. She admitted to the absence of a return address. Return addresses?! Who needs 'em when you've got the sticker with the tracking number????? They kindly told her that her package had "left for downtown" at 1pm, but they would try "to catch it." They made no promises! Well, sure. But that's o-kay! They didn't laugh (in her face anyway). But when Julie didn't hear anything by the close of business the next day, she called Grandma Connie and said, "So! Funny story. . ."

Grandma Connie laughed, and told Julie to text her the tracking number.  Grandma Connie figured it couldn't hurt to go down to the Lake Forest post office the next day to see what she could find out, which she did.

Fans, that was when Mae (May?), of the Lake Forest post office, told Grandma Connie that the package was in Elk Grove Village, and would be delivered to the Lake Forest post office later that day--!!!!! (Mae delivered a lecture about the dangers of trying to do things while distracted and although it seems to us that circumstances were largely making that point better than Mae ever could, and that Mae's lecture was somewhat misdirected--Grandma Connie but an innocent, intended package recipient--we still mostly understand why Mae felt compelled to preach from the post office soap box.) Grandma Connie left Mae with her phone numbers and address (Mae made a copy of Grandma Connie's driver's license), and then left to do a few other things, intending to come back a bit later, but while she was out and about, Mae called Grandma Connie to say the package had arrived and was being dispatched to Grandma Connie's house--which it then was--!!!!!  Can you believe that, Fans?!?! It reached Grandma Connie sans full mailing address!!!!! At her full mailing address!!!!!

And then very next day, two be-stickered packages with books and tee-shirts and sticky hands arrived for the bambini, having a been posted by Grandma Connie and Grandpa--cleverly with the requisite full mailing address--likely the same day Julie failed to do the same on her package.

And on Friday, another box from Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles arrived, this time for Julie, and containing a musical Mother's Day card (swiftly appropriated by the bambini) and some of her favorite fancy, overpriced-but-so-great! lotion--or body creme, as fancy, overpriced-but-so-great! lotion tends to go by.

Mail! The US Postal Service! Ceramics! Body creme! Mothers. Lovely things, all.  (Also return addresses.  Not to mentioning mailing addresses.)

Clara's shiner is from when she fell out of bed in the middle of the night a week or so ago.  (Too many princesses in the bed?)

Joe can read the notes that come with packages all by himself now.

Sticky hand.