She’s Young and With It

Who had the best night at training that she has ever had?

Why, Neko, of course! We were like ridiculously proud parents who put “honor student” bumper stickers on their cars or maybe even “Neko Training” with a dog sitting proudly in the middle. Neko was such a good dog last night. There were even three strange dogs there! She barked, of course, but she tied the Italian greyhound for the number of sits she performed in one minute and for the first time ever, she laid down on the ground and smiled. She is a high strung little dog so she does not lay down very often and she has never laid down and simply relaxed during training. She was very attentive and we smiled ear to ear for the whole class. We may have even been heard asking in that really high dog voice, “Who’s the best dog ever?”

This brings me to my next point. We have become crazy dog people. We were already crazy cat people and now we are crazy dog people too. I have been reading a book called Rex and the City and I can totally relate to the people in the book (except for that part about living in New York City). Last weekend we took the dogs for a car ride and a trip to the park, just to hang out. It was nice weather and we were like, “Let’s go get the dogs!”

So… if I shirk all social responsibilities for the foreseeable future, blame it on the dogs.

Now for the mail… On Monday Clint attempted to retrieve our mail for the third time. He was told the mail was being sorted (what?) and it would be available later. After he made a big deal about the fact that I needed a prescription in that mail, the clerk retrieved the prescription and two other pieces of mail. Obviously we received more than three mail items during all of last week, but that was all the clerk handed over because the mail was in a big bin and had to be sorted apparently.

In a fit of major annoyance, I wrote a 1 1/2 page complaint and submitted it to USPS.com on Monday. Then I started googling “Austin postmaster” and came up with an email address. I emailed the complaint to him too!

Clint once again made an attempt to retrieve our mail on Tuesday. A postal clerk argued with him, telling him that our mailboxes would be repaired by the postmaster himself and our mail would be delivered that day so we should wait. Clint was insistent that he wanted our mail. The supervisor of the facility happened to walk by and hear the clerk denying us our mail. The supervisor advised the clerk to go get our mail and then pulled Clint aside to apologize. She had received my complaint letter and wanted to apologize and assure us that customer service was their top priority. Uh-huh.

Ahem. I am proud of myself for this one. It also appears that our mailboxes were repaired. Clint says the neighborhood should thank me for once again being able to receive mail.

1. When we moved to our new house, we had serious problems with our mail being forwarded to the new address. I complained numerous times before they corrected the problem.

2. About two months after we moved in to the new house, we learned that our street name was changing. The builder knew this was going to happen when we bought our house but they did not advise us, the buyers. So on top of the already existing mail forwarding problems, now our street was a totally different name!

3. The street name change caused major problems with UPS and FedEx delivery. They cannot locate our house no matter how many times I try to explain. I learned after many heartbreaking package delays that if I write my address as
1111 Old and Cranky Ave
(formerly 1111 Young and With It Dr),
we will usually receive UPS and FedEx packages.

(Insert major Amazon.com drama which made me despise both Amazon and the UPS.)

4. Last Tuesday when we checked the mail, a new era of mail problems began. Since we live in a new neighborhood, we have those stupid community mailboxes at the end of our street that require a key to retrieve your mail. I really miss receiving mail at my door. Anyway, somebody busted open three of the four groups of mailboxes that serve our street and another street. Fortunately, the group with our mailbox was not tampered with, but we had no mail. I had been waiting for some Netflix DVDs to arrive for several days and this tampering further delayed my receipt of Six Feet Under and House. Damn those thieves!

5. I called our lovely ghetto post office last Wednesday to find out when we would begin receiving mail again. The woman who answered the phone argued with me! She told me that if our box was not tampered with, then our mail was being delivered. I tried to explain that our box was part of the group of disturbed mailboxes but our set of 16 mailboxes or whatever were not actually compromised. She insisted my mail was being delivered as she spoke to me and the carrier in the background. I attempted to explain that no, there was no mail in the box and I should have received mail. This woman never apologized, she argued with me, and then she stuck me on hold to make the carrier talk to me. The carrier explained that she did not deliver the mail because she thought that our boxes were compromised too, but since they were not, mail delivery should resume to our set of boxes that very day.

6. Our mailbox was compromised after all. When I checked the mail Wednesday afternoon, there was a sign taped to our mailboxes: “Lock is broken. Cannot deliver.” So I guess the vandals did not actually pry the back doors off like they did the others but they broke the lock.

7. Clint called the PO on Thursday and they advised that they were holding our mail. We were told that we could pick it up anytime during their very convenient hours of 8:30 to 5:00 M-F. Grumble. Technically, they have one of those window things where we can collect our mail for a few brief hours during the week and it is even open for a few hours on Saturday.

8. I rented a PO Box on Thursday. To my astonishment, the mail people were friendly and even stayed past closing to finish up the P.O. Box paperwork for me. What a difference from the ghetto PO that delivers our mail to our physical address. They suck.

9. Clint tried to retrieve the mail on Friday. He waited in line for 15 or 20 minutes while one person slowly assisted the people in line. He had to get to work so he left without our mail.

10. On Saturday, I went to the little window thingie to retrieve our mail. I was told that there was no mail being held for our street. The guy repeatedly said, “I don’t know what to tell you.” He suggested that maybe our mailboxes were repaired and the carrier was delivering our mail that day. I advised that no, I just passed the boxes, and they are still broken. “I don’t know what to tell you.” Our carrier was not there at the moment for the guy to ask him about our mail. The window guy advised that the mail had been held earlier in the week and some of our neighbors picked theirs up, but he didn’t know what to tell me about our mail.

* So it seems that perhaps our mail carrier is driving around with our mail in the vehicle. I still do not have those Six Feet Under or House DVDs. Plus, I have a prescription in that mail.

Yeah, we are switching everything over to the new P.O. Box.

Last night I went to BookPeople to find out the finalists and hear some folks read from a short story contest that my friend Sarah entered. Guess what? Sarah won Honorable Mention out of some 400 entrants. Hooray! Congratulations! Her story can be found here. I can’t wait to read it!

For now, work…