4th December 2020
“One hundred and fifty one dollars!” I shouted at the man behind the counter at the post office. We had intended to send two boxes of sweets to my two sons in England for Christmas, but this was ridiculous. After shopping around for some typical American “candies” Kelli had lovingly parcelled them into two boxes using half a roll of packing tape and patiently filling out the customs forms.
The first thing that happened was handing over the forms to which he took one look at them and handed them back along with two new forms.
“These are old forms, you need to fill out the new ones” he said in an unconcerned voice.
Kelli nearly reaches over to rip his head off as he had given them to her yesterday.
“Sorry, I didn’t know there were any old forms left” which was not an answer Kelli was particularly impressed with.
I slowly re-filled out the forms as the post man took the packages to weigh them.
As I was writing out the second one I heard him say what the cost would be.
It was one of those occasions when I thought that I hadn’t heard him correctly, it was only when I heard Kelli groan that I realised that I had.
“That is outrageous” I said, the man shrugged his shoulders “That’s the cost, sorry”
Now I know it is the season of goodwill, but that is just crazy, gone are the days when you could hand it to a man on a horse who would gallop away into the distance. I’m sure Kelli could find a horse on Marketplace and I’ll deliver them myself.
That didn’t put us in a very good mood to start with, the next event nearly threw us over the edge.
We we due to deliver a dresser that we sold yesterday, it was a heavy bugger, so we struggled to get it into the truck.
As we started off towards the north side of Holland the phone rang, Kelli picked it up, it was a text to say the customer had changed her mind. She said nothing, stopped the truck, reversed it into someone’s driveway and headed back home. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I knew from her expression that she was not happy.
“I nearly broke my back getting it into the truck, now she doesn’t want it!!” The pitch of her voice raised with every syllable, my ears were close to popping when she finished.
There was no option but to take it back and unload it again.
My next thrilling episode was going to Menards to buy some spare lamps for the outside display. I rushed in leaving Kelli in the truck still seething.
In my hurry to complete the task, I forgot my glasses. Reaching the area where the Christmas lights were, it looked like there was a robbery because the stock they had looked ravaged. I located the shelf with the spare lamps, but with no glasses I was unable to find the parts I needed. Also the area was so dark you needed a torch to find your way round.
I picked what I thought was the correct ones, and made my way out. Once back to the truck, and with my glasses on, I could see they weren’t right, so I had to take them back.
Needless to say they didn’t have the ones I wanted, so another success down the toilet.
To cheer ourselves up we went to Goodwill, and I think I found a bag of spare lamps, at least they look like the ones, what are the chances of that?, we will see if I’m right.
We did have a bit of good news, we sold the buffet to a nice couple from Rockford, about forty-five minute drive away. This gave me just enough time to cut, and fit a new floor panel for the cutlery tray, as the old one was tatty, and not very appealing. I just managed to remove the masking tape holding the repaired joint together as they arrived.
Another Lifetime to go 