the mail.

mail is one of my favorite things to receive.  now i am picky about the mail i get excited about receiving, it has to be something enjoyable.  for example, the victoria secret catalog, a letter from my spouse, a card for the nearest holiday, more shopping inserts, or letters with good news are all exciting.  bills, not so much, but i know that comes with the territory.

when i was a kid my mom always kept the mail key in her car with easy access to it herself.  we didnt live in houses with their own mailboxes for long so we would always go to the big box at the end of the street.  now every time we drove home from anywhere we would stop at the mailbox and always made a big deal about who was actually going to get out of the car to get it.  upon exiting my mom always joked, as she was never the one to actually get out, that she would just see us at home.  she never really did drive away, but threatened to every time.  as we got older she held tighter and tighter to the mail key because things began arriving in the mail you really didnt want your mom to see.  please, it was nothing gross.  we are talking things from school, i.e. attendance/grade records.  i wasnt really embarrassed until senior year when i started not going to government on a super regular basis, i often volunteered to get the mail those days.  as i got even older and my mom started trusting my brother and i to keep the house standing while she and my dad went out of town she always made a big deal about not forgetting to get the mail.  now this was not my strong suit.  i was really good at getting it if i knew there was something coming for me.  if there wasnt, forget it.  there were many a times when our mail was returned to the post office and given back to us in bins because the mail man could not stuff another piece of mail into the box. 

when i went to college, it was the same thing.  now mind you most of my mail was still going to my parents house so whenever they came to visit they brought a heaping stack for me to go through.  i checked my actual mailbox on campus though, mmmm probably once every two weeks or three weeks.  people started getting in the habit of telling something was coming so i would actually go check my mailbox.  you would think that for someone that loves mail as much as i do, i would actually want to check it. 

when richard and i moved in we received one mail key and one pool key, which i promptly put into a pocket of my purse so i wouldnt lose it.  i took them out later that day to put them on a clover key ring so i wouldnt lose any of the keys and placed them back into my bag.  three days later richard asked if i had checked the mail yet.  i sheepishly looked at him and said i hadnt even taken them out of my bag.  he rolled his eyes and said baby!  when we left that evening to go somewhere i took them out of my bag and into the apartment to place on the very handy key rings i had hung next to the door for keys.  (i hate putting keys in junk drawers).  two more days went by and he asked if i checked the mail, i looked at him and said no, why do i need to.  he told he never checked, apparently that was my role.  so the next morning, all on top of my new task, i took the keys to the car on my way out the door so i could check the mail on the way home.  well in the jumble of my morning rush to the car the keys got shoved into one of the bags i had taken with me.  of course later that night i didnt remember to even check the mail on the way home.

the next evening i actually remembered that i supposed to check the mail so i began looking for the key, i could not find it anywhere.  i ripped my car apart that night, i moved seats, i checked the trunk, searched through all the things in my car desperate to find the damn mail key.  thats when i decided i must have left it at work.  i somehow had gotten this image in my head they were on the desk at work.  well of course that night richard asked if i had gotten the mail.  i looked up again totally embarrassed that i still had not checked for the mail and told him the key was at work.  totally expecting that the key was there the next morning, i almost fell over when i got to work and realized the key was not.  i racked my brain all damn day to figure out where this stupid key was for a task that should have never been given to me in the first place, i never remember the friggin mail.  i finally had a remembered where the key was later that evening, in my gym bag!  i went running into the closet tearing apart the bag when eureka, the key had been found!  i walked out of the closet to richard standing there asking what i was so excited about.  when i told him, he had this ridiculous look on his face like really, how hard is the mail.

the next day was sunday and we were headed out to do errands.  so proud of mail key accomplishment i went to the mailbox while richard went into the apartment office to tell them about our non-working dryer.  when i finally opened the mailbox, it was empty.  are you friggin kidding me!  all the ragging on and the worrying there was nothing in the stupid box.  except, an orange flyer asking for the address and the tenants that live there.  i took it back to richard, who was complaining to the leasing agent about the ongoing parking issue, again.  when i showed him the orange paper was all i had from the big mail excursion he looked at with this "are you serious look."  i couldnt help but laugh at the whole situation.

when i told my mom a few days later that i was put in charge of the mail and she almost fell out her chair from laughing so hard.  i realize now this is probably my trade off, he takes out the trash and i get the mail.  i have since gotten the mail thing worked out.  i have gotten on to a routine of getting the mail just about every other night.  also, i found out why my mom got so much satisfaction from making us get the mail.  oh! and babe, when you read this, please dont take away my mail responsibility, i finally have it under control!