Tag: route

• Keep Play Alive!

  I discovered a great truth about myself and my feelings, that I want to own what I feel and it feels worse to have someone try and get me out before my time, I want feel as long as I want to feel.

  My mail route has been a five day a week job, and I found out on Thursday, that it was switching to a six day a week one week and then a five day the next, rotating every other Saturday off.

  I sulked, and I pouted, and felt deep disappointment in losing a day off, and when my boss tried to placate me with false hopes, it made me feel worse not better.

  It then came to me, it is much better to let a person sit in her pity puddle for as long as she likes and when she comes out on her own, she will be ready to face the life change that put her there.

  I felt cheated and manipulated and cajoled to be feeling a false emotion for her sake, but not mine. Me, I wanted to sit and grieve over my loss of a day off.

  And she felt responsible for my sadness and then tried to feed me false hopes of it being an error that perhaps it will change, etc.

  I told her, please just let me get accustomed to my loss, let me be here, I will adjust and acclimate myself in time. I am okay being sad.

  It began to bother me more that they couldn’t accept me being upset. I can now see it is best to honor the feelings and emotions and not try changing them with words.

  Just let them be.

  I can now see how I have mishandled or perhaps over-handled my daughter’s emotions messing around in them and confusing or mixing them up for my ease.

  I love that we have a right to our emotions and we can express them at our own pace.

  Losing a Saturday every other week does make me sad, it is like losing a play date, a recess or free time…I will have to manipulate the rest of my week to make up this time, perhaps giving up cleaning or washing clothes or cooking…sometimes it takes time to find the silver lining.

  Instead of giving up playtime, I will give up more domestic chores…every other week.

  Whatever it takes to keep Play alive!!!

  

  June 10, 2011

  be, changes, control, emotional, have, letting, life, Mail, play, power, puddle, route, sulking, we

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• Treat the Mail Lady

  After 7 months of delivering mail, I have come to conclusion I will never be 100% accurate, for no matter how hard I try, there always seems to be letters that cling to each other and one gets filed wrong into the wrong box or I get names and addresses transposed and there they sit waiting for the owner of the mailbox to discover my ineptness.

  Of course my errors always land in mailboxes of perfect people, people who have never made an error in their lives, and instead of just putting my error back in the box and gently put up the flag for me to pick it up, they hand deliver it back to the Post Office so my boss can see.

  It is like I have a club of tattle tellers! For luck would have it, I am a repeat offender to the ones who are not willing to keep it just between us.

  As a mail lady, I can tell you a few things you can do to make the mail lady’s day.

  If I make a mistake, just slip it back in the box and raise the flag, I will pick it up and understand why you didn’t want it.

  When you do get one of my errors, I would appreciate if you didn’t write on the envelope, “Wrong Address” for the real owner will know it has taken a detour along the way.

  Running a mail route is like filing letters but our files are miles apart and when we make a mistake there are people in the files hollering at us. Okay, not all but a few loud mouths.

  And these loud mouths are usually owners of mailboxes whose doors don’t stay shut or are hard to open, have red flags missing and then complain when I don’t pick up their mail, have boxes set too far off the road or tilted too far back that I can’t retrieve their mail easily.

  It seems they take joy in finding my mistakes but overlook their own.

  However, there are some delightful people who are kind and have the patience and understanding and just slip my mistake back in the box in silence…and even put notes reminding me that their mail is on hold.

  Most are good caretakers of their boxes and actually worry about making it easier on me…and are very empathetic.

  I deliver a fair amount of packages to a woman who lives alone on a farm overlooking a lake. She has gardens and many bird feeders and a real tiny sauna, a few barns and a smile with bright eyes. Her face is unlike most, for scars of a long ago injury or illness took most of it, yet she is always apologetic for the packages I carry. I would bring her the moon…and feel no strain…I don’t make mistakes on her mail, but feel she would be kind if I did.

  There is a talkative positive older woman who paints and is willing to show me her latest picture, she rides an exercise bike, gets her hair done on Tuesdays, for Wednesday is senior lunch day and gives me oranges and cookies…she too would pooh away my mistakes and just put them back in the box…life is too short for grumpiness. She was sick a few weeks ago, and she didn’t like the way sick felt in her…she gave me glowing reports of the kind treatment she received at the Doctors office…she only meets kindness.

  The lonely folks wait for me, idling along; waiting to say a word or two…our conversations have one-day gaps, we learn about each other bit by bit, stretched out over months of daily one minute visits…slowly we are becoming friends.

  I no longer believe there will come a time of no mistakes, nor do I believe I will become friends with folks who are forever looking at me to fail…and perhaps I am making them happy by giving them something to complain about.

  What is so odd is that the ones with a legitimate complaint have spirits of goodwill…and the others find a misfiled letter a cause to complain.

  It is peculiar to ride along the same route day after day, seeing the same people and learning who they are by how they respond to life and life’s mistakes…you can tell a lot about people by how they treat the mail lady.

  

  April 28, 2011

  life, Mail, mailboxes, mistakes, perfect, route, rural, treatment

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• GPS on the Mail Route.

  There is nothing like seeing your job from the back seat of a dusty van, slowly making its way along the route, time flying by while each mail box slowly crawled on by.

  He did well for his first time out and he is very lucky to have a seasoned mail lady as a back seat driver.

  While my day seemed endlessly long, my patience stretched to its limit, I knew how much my presence meant to him.

  When I made my maiden voyage I was left alone, to discover when I missed a road, when the mail in my hand seems to be from a foreign land, a package unfound…a house lost, another unmarked mailbox, oh, how I would have loved to have someone in the backseat with all the answers!

  My first day ended with tears shed, nerves shot and ready to quit… but the regular mailman left me in charge for two weeks, so I no choice but to go back and try again another day. By the end of the first week, I was comfortable on the route.

  He was very lucky to have me along choking on dust, sitting among the boxes, and trays of mail, being flung back into the seat or flung forward as he got used to using his left foot on the pedals, a live GPS on the mail route.

  October 22, 2010

  Mail, route, rurual, training

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• The Short End of the Stick!

  Each day when I am at work, I silently thank my co-worker for wanting the larger route, the one with fewer dirt roads, but much more mail, for every day my route appears to be easy.

  No matter what day of the week, when we both arrive, I have less, which doesn’t allow me to utter one complaint, for each day He has it harder than I.

  It is amazing that this simple fact that his lot in life is harder than mine leaves me no room to complain, which also sets the tone for the day.

  How lucky am I to have this little route.

  What an awesome way to transition back into the working world, feeling like you are the lucky one each day.

  This lightness carries me through the day, no matter what I have to deliver, he has more, no matter how long it took me it will take him longer.

  He willingly gave up this route for a variety of reasons, yet now he is looking back at with different eyes.

  You truly don’t know what you got til its gone… but I am fully aware of what I have and each and every day and even a few times a day I give thanks to the Gods that be, that something within him wanted him to leave this route to me.

  I am thrilled to be left holding the short end of the stick!

  October 15, 2010

  delivery, easy, grateful, lady, love, Mail, route, rural, work

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