Guys, I am totally going to need a Grinch suit here soon. I love Christmas. In fact, you all know I'm Christmas crazy, but I am not feeling Christmasy right now. And, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who complains around Christmas is just a Grinch. Okay, where's my suit?
Remington Alvalina Sylvester died today. Remington Alvalina Sylvester, Remy for short, is my sewing machine. It felt a lot like the end of the world because I still had two more presents to sew for Christmas. If it wasn't bad enough that I was this far behind in the first place, now I'm stuck with fabric I've already bought. I was able to sew one thing today on a little machine I have, but since it doesn't get in corners I had to do a lot of hand sewing. I figure hand sewing came about at the same time, and completely because of Lucifer's fall from Heaven. That's how much I hate it.
Aunt Bev has graciously allowed me to come use her machine to finish the last project, which is going to give away some surprises, but I don't know if I have a choice. I'm unsure if my machine will sew the material I'm using, and even if it does, things take twice as long with that machine because it is a little, cheap one intended only for mending. If I can get it done on the machine I will, because I still want Aunt Bev to be surprised on Christmas.
And the irony in all of this is that I took an hour and a half last night to oil the sewing machine, clean it, and make sure it was spiffed up. It worked fine after I did that last night, and then today I plugged it in, the light came on, so I knew it had power, but when I pushed the presser foot there was the big nothing. I think the motor might have gone, but since the machine is from the fifties, I also fear I won't be able to get it repaired. I am sad because I love Remy, and yes, for the third day in a row I am anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. But Remy is all metal, no plastic, and a true quality piece. I ask the sewing queens to please let her be okay. I don't want to have a sewing machine funeral this close to Christmas.
If that wasn't enough fun, the dryer just gave up, too. Then it worked again for seemingly no reason, but it smelled funny. Tomorrow, my mom is going to tear it apart and clean it to see if that helps. If that goes anything like it did with Remy, it will work the rest of the day tomorrow post the cleaning, but the following day it will just die for no reason.
Also, I placed four separate orders from Amazon. I got three. The other one was sent out last week, and it's been an hour from here in a postal facility for four days, with no activity. I've ordered stuff plenty of times off of Amazon before, and it always goes through that facility and has always left the facility within twelve hours of being checked in. I'm starting to get concerned, especially after looking into it and finding other people complaining about the same facility, often with the outcome becoming that the postal service lost their package after it went into the facility. Somehow I think "losing packages" is another term for "some lovely employee stole it." I'm trying not to get anxious too soon, but when this is abnormal and it's already paid for, it's definitely happening. When I put the tracking number into USPS.com, it's also claiming it's aware of the package, but has no information on it. It's Amazon and FedEx Smartpost that's telling me it's in the postal facility. This all seems fishy.
I am with the lady who wrote the original note; the receiver of this passive aggressive note. Uncle Paul is a tool. I don't think anyone really likes, respects, or relies on the USPS because they want to. Basically, they're forced to. Aunt Bev used to be a mail carrier, but she actually did her job correctly. She took the time to finish her route last to make sure everything was kosher. I think most of you agree that this is not normal. Our mail people are a very special breed. Just a few examples.
* One time I had a package coming to me. The tracking number told me it was sitting at my post office, and when I didn't receive it that day, nor the next, nor did it say it ever went out for delivery, I went to the post office. The postmaster helped me, which is clearly the scarier part of this story. I could see my package sitting not ten feet from the counter, face up with my name on it. I said something to the postmaster and she kept telling me it wasn't my package. I gave her my name, address, ID, everything, and she still told me it wasn't my package. I left and figured I'd come back another day and get the lady who normally works there. Clearly, I should have committed assault and flew across that counter, beat her up and took my package, because the dimwit sent it back between the day I was there and the next day.
I called and talked to someone at the company it was coming from to alert them what happened. They called me a few days later to confirm this and sent it back out. They didn't even charge me shipping again, although it wasn't their fault. Again, the package came in and sat at the post office. When I went over this time, the other girl was there and handed me the package. The postmaster overheard this and came over and started throwing a fit about the whole thing. I told her straight out that my package had been sent back. The tracking information gave them proof, also, the company it was coming from confirmed it had been sent back from out post office. She vehemently refused any wrongdoing. Any time I go over there I avoid her because I don't trust I won't get whatever I'm mailing out sent back to my house.
* The other day we were awaiting a package that was out for delivery. We happened to catch the mail person down at our mailbox, outside of her car, standing in front of our mailbox. We immediately had to watch her because we couldn't figure out what she was doing, plus she was a substitute, as we didn't recognize her. She had a package that was too big to fit properly in the mailbox. The lady stood down there for three minutes until she shoved it in there. It would have been quicker and easier to bring it to the door by that time. Also, there were breakable things in there. Luckily, everything was fine, but this could have ended badly.
* Our mail people have broken at least three of our mailboxes that I can remember, but I think it may be more. I know we've at least bought three because of them since we've been here. We just refuse to replace this one. It doesn't have a properly working flag. They pulled the door off. We don't care anymore.
* We can't mail anything out of our mailbox, even when we did have the flag. They either never took it, or it never got to where it was going. I'm slightly confused about why we have a mailbox and pay our postal workers.
* There's been several times they've half ass put stuff in our box and it's ended up all over the place. Not just our mail, the neighbor's too. And this is when we had a lid. The lid was shut. Yep, we're confused about how the mail ended up all over the place, too.
* We often get other people's mail. Often. We wonder about what mail we never get because people just see the wrong name and address and throw it away.
* I ordered samples and I get confirmations when they are sent. I haven't gotten several. Knowing our mail people, I think I have a good idea where they went.
But this still doesn't beat the one random UPS guys. Aside from the guy who came here one time, opened the porch door, and tossed the package of breakable things across the porch instead of coming onto it, while I saw him do it from the other side of the windows, we've had no problems with UPS at all. In fact, even that time, thank God, the package is in one piece. It's a Christmas present so no one's tried it yet, but here's to hoping it actually works.
There was this one time, however, that I was getting ready to leave for work. I saw a UPS man pull up into our driveway. I knew I hadn't ordered anything from UPS, so I didn't know what was going on. Then, he never came to the house. I didn't even see him get out of the truck from the angle he was parked at. All it looked like was that he had parked in our driveway. This was some years years ago and I looked to be about fourteen or fifteen, so I wasn't real comfortable going down there without knowing what was going on. Maybe that's stupid, but there was no one else home and the neighbors weren't home. The whole thing was just weird.
Several minutes later he left, and it was now time for me to leave for work. I went down to the garage to find eight boxes piled up against the garage door, spanning the entire way across the garage door. These were huge boxes, you guys. I walked over to them and none of them were ours. None of them even belonged on a road near us. I have no idea what the hell this guy was doing, and furthermore, who piles up boxes against someone's garage door? How stupid do you have to be to think that's a good idea?
At this point, I had to get to work, so I figured I would move them, call my mom and tell her the situation real quick, and then go to work and let her deal with it, or deal with it later. Only, when I went to move the boxes, I couldn't. I looked at the weight and they were all eighty pounds or more. There was no way I was going to move them myself, especially when they were as large as they were. I had to call my boss and explain the story, and tell her I'd be late for work. I still wonder if she ever believed my reason.
I went inside and called UPS. They told me someone would be by to get the stuff around 8PM. I explained to them how that just wasn't good enough. Their driver had made a misjudgment by putting boxes in front of someone's garage door. Again, who does that? And what if it would have rained hard? It was already sprinkling. Also, he was nowhere near the correct road. They told me there was nothing they could do. On the boxes was the phone number of the person who had ordered the merchandise inside of the boxes, so I called them. They were nice and felt really bad that I was blocked in. In the meantime, my mom came home from work, so I took her car and went to work. I was later informed that the stuff in those boxes was camping equipment, thus why it was so heavy. The person did come and load it themselves. I don't know that I ever bothered to call UPS to let them know.
Most of these stories are funny now. Most of them.
On a more cheery note, yet confusing since this has nothing to do with Christmas, there was a Psych marathon on today. You can't be properly cranky during a Psych marathon, so I left it on all day. I don't want to be a whiny Grinch.
And in case you wanted to know, apparently this song was number one on my birthday. It reminds me of what would have happened to Carry On Wayward Son if it met the 80's. Thank God it didn't.
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