Showing posts with label postal passion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label postal passion. Show all posts

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Fondly Recalling "Mailbox Mauling" While Pregnant

It's that wonderful time of the year again...... snowfall, kids and dogs playing in snow, snuggling under a blanket with loved ones, desecration of mailboxes....

Ah, yes! Good times, my friends.  Good times.

That last one carries many fond memories for me.  Before 2010, I never really noticed mailboxes.  And if I happened to see one that had been mangled, I always felt bad for the people it belonged to.  

And then I got pregnant.  Everything changed.

I've always had a love for MAIL.  When I was little, I ordered the RCA Record of the Month and stalked my mailbox waiting for it to arrive each month.  At every business I worked at, with the exception of hair salons, I was the mail person.  I retrieved the mail, sorted mail, stamped mail, dropped mail off at the post office, created mailing lists, etc.  One place even had me  help with the designing of their mailbox/brick fixture.  And when I forget to get the mail at home, someone always seriously asks "Are you okay?"  I love mail.  I'm sure you're picking up on that now.

The last 1.5 months of my pregnancy, I couldn't sleep.  I contracted a nasty cold after Justin and I decided to take a trip to a casino for the weekend.   Between the cigarette smoke and the INSANE AMOUNT OF GERMS, I was sick within 24 hours.   

If I wasn't sitting at a  minimum of an 80 degree angle, I was coughing and choking.  Laying down was impossible.  My anxiety was out of control and I was afraid that if I fell asleep, I would choke to death.  I watched the sun rise almost every day, still awake from the night before.  I knew every show that was on from the minute I got into bed until 6am.    I got between 2.5 hours and 45 minutes of sleep each night.  And then I worked all day at my physical, outdoorsy job.  

Recipe for disaster, indeed!

That month before Allie was born was a doozie when I was behind the wheel.  We had three relatively new vehicles that I was able to drive.  I had some sort of collision with all three within a few weeks.

Being blonde, Justin and I never thought about the possibility that maybe I shouldn't drive after the accidents with the first two cars.  However, as I was driving his Corvette into another car, he yelled "STOP!  STOP!" and calmly extracted me from the vehicle.  He decided that I shouldn't drive myself that day.  (Interpretation: "You can trash the other two cars, but don't f*ck up the really nice one or I'll mess your pregnant shit up !")  To be completely fair, he was super nice to me and held my hand while I cried because I had blemished his precious vehicle.  I'm really really REALLY lucky.

Pregnant selfie taken shortly after the "Vette Incident of 2010"

Going back to the topic of mailboxes.....

We had a Toyota FJ Cruiser and it was primarily Justin's truck.  For some reason I had it that day and on my ride home, I panicked when I saw deer on the side of the road.  My reflexes were totally lagging, so somehow I managed to swerve and hit both the front and back (but not the middle) of the truck into a row of mailboxes.

I stopped and was completely shocked.  I got out of the truck and stared at the truck.....then the mailboxes.....then the truck again.  There was mail everywhere.  As I mentioned, it was a row of mailboxes.  Dead soldiers, all bent over and their guts were scattered all over the road.  

As a lover of mail, I did what any other postal devotee would do.  I immediately started picking up the mail.  My big pregnant butt was walking around, bent over, trying to get the mail before someone drove by and really ruined it!  I waddled as quickly as I could and collected it all, junk mail included. 

As a partially sane, sleep deprived person, the important thing to do finally clicked in and I called Justin.  

Justin: Hey honey.  (he always answers nicely like that)

Me:  I just had an accident.

Justin: What??

Me:  I saw a deer and I thought it was going to run in front of me and I swerved and I hit this row of mailboxes and fishtailed again and then I hit the rest of them!

Justin: Where ARE you????

Me: (I give him the address.  I can't tell you.  They might have been YOUR mailboxes for all I know!)

Justin: That's where the mailboxes are?  Where are YOU?

Me: I just told you.

Justin: You're in front of the mailboxes?

Me: Yes.  I don't know which one belongs to which house and it's getting dark and no one is around.... (i'm crying by this point)

Justin: Why are you still there then?

Me: (silence)

Justin: Vicki!  Are you there?  Can you hear me??

Me: Yes.

Justin: What are you doing?

Me: Sorting the mail.

Justin: Your kidding right?

Me: No, I'm not!  The mail was everywhere! I can't really see the numbers on the boxes and it's a lot to sort!!

To this day, when Justin tells the story, he always emphasizes the fact that I sorted the mail before I left because he thinks I have an abnormal obsession with the postal system and, apparently, this story backs up his theory.

So, when I see a mangled mailbox, I remember that day fondly.  I won't continue with the dialogue, but while in that state of mind, I determined that the people should actually PAY me for hitting their mailboxes, because the other ones where total crap to begin with.  They would have to replace the mailboxes with new ones, which would increase the value of their property!  Therefore, as I informed my husband, I did them a huge favor, and THEY should pay US for the auto body repairs on the truck.  How I came up with that wacky logic is unclear, but I remember thinking that I was really smart when I was pregnant, sleep deprived and off of my anxiety medication.  AND, when I took him to see the mailboxes the next day, they had already replaced all of them with the pretty new kind that are encased in plastic mailbox-shaped suits of armor.  Improvements were swiftly made.  All. Because. Of me.

I am unable to post photos of the mailboxes before and after they were replaced (again, they could be YOURS and you'd be super pissed, as I imagine that you aren't buying that whole property value increase theory), but I've seen many others since that day and I always wonder what the story is behind them.  I've taken photos of some of my favorites since then and I hope you find these as intriguing as I did.  (Note: These are all taken in rather nice neighborhoods, which makes some of them even more entertaining.  Enjoy!)

These people are not giving up.  You can see by the multiple types of tape used that this was not their first rodeo, if you know what I mean.  

My personal favorite!  These people are on a mission.  They will protect their mailbox at all costs.  Garbage can filled with  cinder block chunks and held down with rebar, with electrical wire AND an audio/visual cable tying it to the post for the added touch.  I bet you he grabbed everything he could find in his garage that last time his mailbox was hit and put this together, fueled by fury!

Piggy back mail boxing.  At what point do you call your neighbor and say, "Ive had enough.  I'm not buying another mailbox.  I'm going to just tie mine onto yours.  I hope you can deal with that"?  Then, was the main box hit and the guy was too afraid to replace it with the other mailbox (from aforementioned pissed off neighbor) attached?

True New Yorker.  This person just took the box, flipped it so the opening was  facing up and still uses it this way.  There was mail in it!  I peeked!  This guy knows that if he replaces that box and we get a ton of snow, the DPW Angry Plowers will just take the new one out too.

This person just gave up.  RIP mailbox.  

Sent to me by a friend.  Total honorable mention! Support stick, rope, massive duct tape and who knows what else they used.  That little red flag screams "Never say die!  You can knock me down, but you can't take me out!"

If you have any of your own please email them to me!  gr8sh80L80@icloud.com (those are zeros, not the letter "o")

Wishing you all a lovely start to the holiday season!  xoxo


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