Tales From The Mail truck...

 As I sit here tonight, on 800mg of Advil three times a day, I am alternating between the heating pad and my icy cold fingers to loosen up my shoulder. The political mailing season has been brutal this year.  Combined with the three days of rain, the sudden drop of temperature from 60's to 20's, and the constant sprinkler motion of my left arm while I hit 6 bundles of mail at a time for each of my 650+ mailboxes has set the cotton candy calcium buildup and jagged arthritic texture of my shoulder joint on fire.

The only relief we have gotten from all of this crazy is that Amazon has moved into to our area and is now delivering their own packages.  Typically I get 100-200 amazon packages a day.  Now I get maybe 15-20. Of course, those are the heavy, awkward ones that would make no sense to burden their drivers with, when it still costs just $2.39 for Amazon to ship it through us. And yet, even with the loss of packages I am still getting packages that don't fit in the mail truck.  Thursday I got a fireplace mantel. With the state of my shoulder I didn't even try to get it in the truck, I just knew it wasn't going to fit.  They sent it with an afternoon guy in a completely empty truck.

On Friday it poured all day.  We got on the road early though because of the lack of packages and the day was going pretty well until I got a call that I accidently left 10 packages behind. Since I never do this, they sent the afternoon guy out to deliver them to me, and I only had to back track a bit to get the ones I missed, not bad, but hugely annoying. As the storm got worse, and the temps dropped, I got to the end of a neighborhood and saw a note in a mailbox.

The mantel had been delivered to the wrong house.

The house it had been delivered to had left it underneath their overhang so it wouldn't get wet, but it was in the dirt against the house.  *sigh* So I picked it up off the ground from under the 3 foot overhang, maneuvered the 100 pound 2.5x 8 foot long box and put it in the mail truck, straight in.  Nope.  

Under the tray? Nope. 

Sideways, kitty corner, over the tray? Heck no.

So I'm standing there in the rain, shoulder popping and on fire, and finally made the call.

I drove through the neighborhood with the back door open, mantel hanging out. Never in 17 years have I had to do that. I got to the house, luckily the garage was open, and slid the box safely out of the rain.

With another pop of my shoulder, there was still 100 more stops to go, and the day was just getting worse. My fingers are numb from cold and rain, and at this point I've quit 500 times in my head. But I trudge on...

The snow rolled in thankfully after I was off the road.  It made grocery shopping ridiculous, but it was enough to keep both kids in and off the road that night. Oldest came home early rom the city, and Youngest was all set with driving in the ice. Saturday's delivery was better, as the sun melted through most of the locks on trucks and collection boxes.  But there was a rush to find what we could of de-icer and in the shadier areas, there were plenty of ice puddles in front of boxes.  

Which brings me to Sunday, still nursing the shoulder, while the husband watches 60 minutes. More election talk is prevalent, everyone speculating what will happen Tuesday. 

I'm just hoping Tuesday doesn't bring more political flyers, snow, or 100 pound packages.

Is that too much to ask?