Incoming!

So I'm driving down my wet, muddy driveway in the darkness of early morning on the way to my mechanic's shop so I can get a new brake master cylinder and proportioning valves (because yes, I resolved yesterday's dilemma by making my careful way on icy roads to town in order to buy interfacing and take lunch to an ailing colleague and pick up a check to pay for the brake work, except that when I got to the cashier's office the cashier said, quote, what check?, and it quickly became apparent that the minor functionary who had promised that the check would be ready for me yesterday had failed to execute the paperwork properly to make that happen, and besides, everything was at sixes and sevens because many campus functionaries, both minor and major, had taken part of the day off to attend the funeral of the college trustee whose financial problems inspired him last week to blow his brains out, so the long and short of it is that the check was not available, but after I pointed out that it had been promised and by whom, then some wheels were turned and elbows twisted and the check finally, to make a long story short, appeared) when my progress is impeded by what looks like and indeed turns out to be a large Christmas package wrapped in plastic and standing smack in the middle of a particularly wet and muddy part of my driveway, positioned in such a way that I had to either drive right over it or get out in the mud to retrieve it, which I did.

It was a lovely package of fruit and other yummies from Harry and David, but that's beside the point. The point, in case you were wondering, is that the last place it would occur to me to look for a large Christmas gift is in the mud at the end of my driveway. I suppose it's a better location than the one our mail carrier chose earlier in the week--next to the tractor in the carport, where we weren't expecting to see a pile of Christmas boxes and therefore indeed did not see it until the bottom box was soaked through by snow-melt dripping across the floor.

Let me just admit right here that being my mail carrier can't be an easy job. She has to contend with the skinniest, twistiest, nastiest country roads in this part of the county, and if that's not bad enough, she has to deal with our mailbox out at the road, which sometimes freezes shut, and then when she has packages too big to fit in our mailbox, she has to contend with our driveway, which is difficult enough for those of us who drive it all the time and must look really daunting to those who are unfamiliar with its idiosyncrasies. When the weather drops snow or freezing ran on our driveway, it look impassable, and sometimes it is. So I don't blame our mail carrier for her reluctance to drive up to the house.

But: if she's going to leave a package in a puddle in a place where we would never think to look for it (the carport), then she ought to at least let us know; and if she's going to leave a package in the mud at the end of the driveway, then what's to stop the local dogs from peeing on it or tearing it open? And what's to stop the local rednecks from grabbing it as they drive by in their pickup trucks? And what if I hadn't been venturing out at the crack of dawn this morning to obtain a new brake master cylinder and proportioning valves--would the package of fruit and other yummies from Harry and David have ended up feeding the neighbor's annoyingly bossy basset hound? (If so, I can console myself with the fact that the chocolate would have killed her.)

This incident is not doing anything for my Christmas spirit, but fortunately, the Christmas package season will be over soon, and then my mail carrier can go back to contending with the icy roads and the freezing mailbox and forget all about figuring out new ways to drop off packages. Until next year, that is. Maybe we should get her one of those cannons they use to shoot T-shirts into the crowd at ballgames: she could sit out at the road and propel the packages up the hill toward the house. They might land in places where we would never think to look for them, but at least the spectacle would provide some holiday entertainment.