Post Office Frowny Face

I hate going to the post office. Have I ever mentioned that? It’s not that our local PO has a long line or is a long drive away or is an unattractive building. Just the opposite on all counts. It’s never more than a 7 minute wait. It’s a 5 minute drive. Easy parking right outside. Attractive 1930s mural painted by someone in the WPA (I think. Well, that’s what I remember hearing.) And the employees are very, very nice. I like them a lot.

But I hate to go. It’s irrational. I have a package for a dear friend who got married, and I’ve needed to mail it to her since August, folks.

Nicht gut, as they say in Stuttgart. And probably in Vienna, which I recently mistook on Twitter for Venice and asked a new Viennese follower of mine how the flooding was in Vienna. He gave me an emoticon wink and said, “Don’t you mean Venice?”

Super duh.

I think it stems back to when my kids were littler. I built up an irrational terror of the place. They had all these postal products–colorful bubble packs, Disney stuffed animals, other kid-attractive-nuisances–all at reaching level of any child. And if a kid touched them they automatically disintegrated and I had to purchase these [overpriced] items.

Plus, the place used to house the Forest Service upstairs. And there was an elevator. And my kids knew it. So if we were going to the post office, we had to budget an extra half hour for the elevator alone.

Sigh.

Now I’m just me going to the post office, but it still puts my heart into palpatations.

Ridiculous.

Like my good, dear grandpa said to himself near the end of his life (in a little note-to-self written on the inside flap of his checkbook) “No whimping!”

And yet I’m such a whimp.

Sorry, Auraelia, dear. Your wedding gift might be yet another month late.