See, I had taken my B vitamins

I went back to the post office today at 3 p.m. At 3 in the afternoon there was a good crowd waiting in line for one of two clerks. Unfortunately, one gentleman customer appeared to have packed up his entire belongings and was mailing each of 400 or so packages to a different destination. Each package was of a unique size as well, so don't go thinking there was some time saved by weighing and measuring one package and applying the same postage to each box. Oh HELL to the NO.

I had my children with me.

I had secured my mailing label to my package with the three inches of packing tape that I so freakishly thought on Monday might be bestowed on me by the jovial postal worker behind the counter who, on Monday, raspberried in my face and lamented to me as he scanned the line of customers who had assembled there, "They just keep coming, don't they?"

I suppose my postal employee friend would be a lot happier if his business had few, if any, customers?

So there I was waiting patiently in line behind 15 other patient customers while my children tried to 1) mail each other through the package drop, 2) break the stamp machine by pressing buttons simultaneously, and 3) offer to help various strangers put their money in or take their change out of the self-serve stamp machine. Then it dawned on me that I could serve myself with one of those machines. I could weigh and measure my package, figure out the postage, buy it out of the machine, and be on my way! All without waiting in line!

Beep, bop, boop, DONE!

And as I opened the package drop door I read the sign that said if your package weighs more than 13 ounces you have to hand it over directly to a postal employee. That meant waiting in a line which now had 24 people in it and the guy mailing away his belongings had only sent off 1/35 of his stuff.

I am amazed that I handled it all as well as I did.

I shall try again tomorrow. Third time's a charm, right?