Kelake

The last time I went to the post office, I thought I just met an employee that was having a bad day and had a penchant for exaggeration. It turns out that that is her normal demeanour. It also turns out that they were quite serious about automatically returning mail-to-sender if there is no post office box in front of the address.

Before we managed to secure this PO Box, a client needed to send me a package, and since I didn’t know where we would be living, I thought the safest bet was to give our new address. Unfortunately, at some expense, they sent it by priority post and not by courier. They notified me yesterday that it was returned to sender. Embarrassing.

The same happened with some legal documents that were sent to our address.

I’m not sure what the employees at this particular Canadian post office do, but I can confirm that they don’t sort mail.

We bought our first lawnmower recently. Another indication that I must be putting down roots. Our house came with a ride-on lawnmower, but I am determined never to sit my ass on one of those things ever.

I wanted to cut the grass immediately, but Sheryl kept reminding me to think of the bees, think of the bees. So we waited. And there is a bee who comes around a lot, so I will plant some flowers for it later.

Then after filling the new fresh, out-of-the-box lawnmower with oil and gas, I tried to start it, and it wouldn’t start. We both tried repeatedly but had no luck. We were defeated by the most simplistic of machines (I wanted to buy a battery-powered one, but I don’t think they are ready for a field like ours.)

Then the rain started. And the grass continued to grow.

After the grass turned to dandelions, we got our neighbourly welcome note in the form of a letter from the town stating that our grass was too high and must be dealt with or we will be fined.

It’s a somewhat derelict area except for an Airbnb whose owner naturally lives elsewhere and, as such, isn’t a neighbour or neighbourly at all. So I suspect they complained, so we will not sully the look of their $ 450-a-night rental.

Dandelions are a terrible look.

I don’t know if this is the norm for every home across the Island, but where we moved, you must get a community mailbox before receiving mail. So shortly after closing on our house, I went to the nearest post office and asked:

“Hi, I would like to get a mailbox, please. We just moved in up the street.”

“Ok, before I can give you a mailbox, I will need to see one piece of ID and mail with your address on it.”

“I don’t have mail with my new address on it because I can’t receive mail until I get a mailbox.”

We went back and forth with this a couple of times until I suggested I come back with something stating I lived at the address in question.

It took a few weeks to return because they close at 5 pm. But they reluctantly gave us a mailbox (we arrived 10 minutes before 5) but with a stern warning – “We don’t sort mail at the post office. We return to sender if you don’t include the box number in your address.”

I get the feeling that there is some stress at our new local PO.