I can finally relax. December 17th and I can finally relax. I just hugged and kissed David and Opal and waved goodbye as they drove off on a road trip to Palm Springs. I am alone and calm, things are progressing as planned.
Today THE LETTER could start arriving at people’s homes. The mass mailing went off without a hitch this year (as far as I know since this is the first year I didn’t actually go to the bulk mail division of the post office and mail it myself). I picked the 20 page missive up at Kinkos, took it to my office, and with 5 helpers stuffed it into next year’s calendars, then stuffed those into envelopes, then sealed the envelopes, then labelled the sealed envelopes, and then sorted and counted them by zip code.
537. This year the mailing was 537 pieces. At this point this year I was done. Usually at this point my faithful friend Tim and I would box these up, load them into our cars, and drive to the bulk mail post office. It was always a negative experience for me. Stressful. Depressing. They have crAZy forms that must be filled out by doing complicated math while following about 17 rules the Postmaster has devised to make the experience miserable. (Really, I’m good with most math but theirs is most complicated with multiple factors that each have 5 numbers trailing the decimal point and that vary based on quantities to certain zip codes and by piece weight and, my favorite part, the teeny-tiny boxes on the form that you can’t fit a 7 digit number into neatly.)
Last summer I was dreading this out loud to my friend Matt and he told me there was a woman who worked in his office who did this for hire around the holidays to make extra money. I called her in July and literally set a date and time for her to pick these up in December. We settled on 2:00 PM on Thursday December 15th. I wanted to get on her radar early and secure a slot. This gave me a writing deadline that I don’t usually have. But it also gave me peace. Renee arrived at the exact time we set back in July and I sighed with relief and turned my focus to getting David packed and on the road for Palm Springs.