the bored hermit

6/23/99

Not only did I not do anything interesting today, I didn’t even think anything interesting today. Mostly screwed around with the web and some possible re-design ideas for the journal index. I did some shifting in the living room, mostly moving junk from one box to another. It was worth it, though; I cleared a pathway through the shit and started to pile my filled boxes near the door so they can be loaded into the truck easily when moving-time comes.

My house is a disaster. The basement is neat enough, the kitchen is do-able, the bedrooms get closer every day. The living room...well, the living room won’t really be live-able until the move. My “failed-daughter-of-a-neat-freak” feelings started to subside a little bit, and then it occurred to me that the landlord may want to show the house before I move out. Doh. Right now my sorting system consists of piles. The piles make perfect sense to me, but they look like hell if you don’t live inside my head. Fuck. Oh, well.

When it got too hot upstairs to pack, I dragged myself to the basement with some graham crackers and a recently unearthed copy of a book of short stories by Joyce Carol Oates. Every few pages I’d glance at the sliver of sunlight on the floor, watching it crawl off to the eastern edge of the carpet. When it was suitably late in the afternoon, the narrow strip of yellow sun completely faded, I clambered onto the Internet for a stimulating evening of web poker. I am such a slacker.

I even corrupted eric. The Bingo Zone should give me a commission for sucking in my friends. There I was with a chat messenger in one corner of the screen and a mindless web game in another corner, wasting away. Checked my mail every half-hour.

Speaking of mail, I’m about to do battle with the US Postal Service. I don’t believe in all that Seinfeld mail conspiracy blather, and I feel no qualms about dissing the post office here.

The postal carriers are neglecting me. Today it happened for the fourth time in a month. It’s not just that I don’t get mail; I don’t expect to get mail every single day, though I almost always get junk mail of some sort. I do, however, have mail going out almost every day. That’s how I know they’re not coming to the house. I’m a hermit right now, I pay a zillion bills and have business correspondence by snail mail, and for fuck’s sake, I’m in the middle of a very long-distance relationship, here. John doesn’t have access to the web for non-work, so any materials/poetry/stories/journal entries too long to read over the phone have to be mailed.

Also, I have two neighbors with whom I share the front sidewalk. All three of our mailboxes are in the same area. On these odd no-mail days, they never receive mail either.

So I look out around 11 am, when the mail usually comes, and my out-going is right where I left it. Noon. 1...2...4:30.... And then it’s too late. Once I called the post office at 3 and they “had no idea” and couldn’t guarantee anything except “sometime before dusk.” So if it’s mid-afternoon and I suspect they’re not coming, I have to accept that and just hope they come tomorrow.

I called a different time, asking as politely as I could if there was something I didn’t know; my mail had been missed two Saturdays in a row. I spoke to a very nice manager-sort who explained that my normal carrier was away and two other carriers had split the route; my little duplex-group must fall right on the line. I understood, and was very patient. Everything was straight for a few weeks, but today we had no mail again.

Is there just nothing I can do? The mail that needed to go out today included my rent for next month. It’s a good thing I send it out a few days early. And I can tell you, I feel really secure knowing my $565 personal check, written out to an individual, is sitting in my mailbox for two days. With all the car break-ins and vandalism going on here in the past few weeks....

On top of my sketchy mail delivery, I was irritated because John’s parents sent me some time-dated material on a CD a few weeks back. Well, actually, they sent it a couple months ago. I didn’t receive it until 4 weeks after they’d mailed it.