Driving

This was not an exciting day; spent behind the wheel of the car or in the post office. Way too much time in the post office.

Mailing off the four (other one I am hand delivering) packages to Texas, Florida and California in the US and Switzerland was the easy part. Let me just slide over the part where I sealed up the packages before putting on address labels. Random draw, random color sock kit, not done on purpose.

It was the other packages that just about killed me. The first US Army cadet to attend Sandhurst is graduating this week. As you all know, it is really hard to live somewhere for a year and not accumulate stuff. Postal Unit, of course, is only open on week days. Shippers require you to be there for half a day just waiting for them to arrive. His schedule does not let him off on a weekday. Kindly foolishly, I had offered to mail out a couple of packages for him. I had in mind a few boxes.  Tuesday I managed the two duffel bags with only a twinge from the back. The box, however was an issue.

If you are not familiar with US postal regs, let me refresh you. 70#  and 120″ are the limits with a surcharge for anything over 106″. Obviously the reason I am telling you is that the third item was a box. A large and heavy box. It squeaked under the size limit but weighed 76#.

My weight varies between 110-120. Lifting a 76# box is beyond me. I quit lifting my offspring well before they made that weight. Borrowing the cart from the local postal unit I slid it from the trunk onto the cart and wheeled up the ramp. The guys weighed it for me and put it back on the cart. You don’t want to know about getting it back in the car. I can almost stand up straight three days later which is why I didn’t bother to make a postal run on Thursday.

This morning I attacked the box with my bayonet (doesn’t everyone have one from OIF as a souvenir?) slicing open dozens of layers of tape. I extracted enough books from the bottom of the box to make up four additional boxes then repacked the clothing around the picture frames (I will be really surprised if any of these make it intact, even had the previous packing job stayed intact.

$68.xx later (and the champ at 48#), those five boxes were posted in time to make the Alconbury pickup and seven boxes were in my trunk for the return journey to Camberley. two book boxes for Ms Copper, my MAC software, STR kit and the new Cookie A book.

Given all this joy, I might even consider knitting a sock again. It has been months.

Doors

From Harrogate, Yorkshire

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2 Responses to Driving

  1. Ruth says:

    Ouch. My back hurts in sypmathy.. or maybe it’s just the estate sale and house clean-out I’ve been overseeing. Who knows?

  2. Angeluna says:

    Glad it wasn’t the sock packages that did you in at the post office. My package arrived on the day of my father’s funeral. So I had a cheerful surprise to open at the end of a difficult day. If it was random, I surely am happy. Thank you Holly.

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