August 13, 2025
By the end of last week, we’d all gotten used to living
in an area under construction. Even the dogs had become used to the noise of
the machines, and the people wearing hard hats, in our vicinity. And then this
week we have been living in relative silence.
The crew had mentioned that they wouldn’t be here on
our street this week, that they had to be in another area of the town,
completing their previous project.
It’s hard to believe that our small town has work
crews in more than one place at a time, but it’s true. With all the new housing
that has gone up in the last couple of years, the town is in the enviable
position of having relatively full coffers. And you know what that means,
right? For reasons that I will never fully grasp, if the town doesn’t spend the
money that it has budgeted for various projects each year, funds received from
collecting fees and fines and taxes and such, then the following year
provincial and federal grant money will be less than the year before.
Those of us who are parents find this a hard concept
to wrap our heads around. In the lexicon of my teen years, “way to teach the
local government how to manage their money!”
In the lead up to this work project, we had believed
that we were as prepared for what would be happening as it was possible for us
to be. And that was true except for two minor exceptions.
The first was we missed the small paragraph on the
back of the newsletter that advised that our regular garbage collection trucks
would not be allowed in the area at all during the project period. But not to
fear, our garbage would be collected on our regular day—by the construction
crew. Monday night was a bit of a last-minute scramble as we had to use black
marker to put our address on the recycle boxes, so they could be returned to
us. But we got it done.
The second exception was discovered when we realized that
we have not received our mail since the pavement came up. Now, we double
checked all the paperwork we had, and there was no mention of an alternate
place to collect our snail mail from. Not at all. And since both Amazon and UPS
have been making deliveries hereabouts as the crews got to work, we didn’t
expect our post office to be any different.
Normally this wouldn’t be a problem for us, but I had
ordered some balm from the west coast, and it was being sent via the post
office to us. It was due to arrive last week, and it didn’t. I did receive an email
from Canada Post telling me that the parcel has not been delivered, that it was
still enroute, and that they would let me know when it might be coming. But there
hadn’t been a word from them in nearly a week.
I've learned something in the last couple of days, and
as all of you know I’m always looking for new things to learn. This week’s “new
thing” is that if you want to get in touch with someone to tell you what’s
going on with your mail delivery…. good luck.
I got no real human on the phone, yesterday, except
when I called our local post office branch. You might have thought that is
where I should start, but I knew the mail was collected from the depot in the
next town by those whose job it is to deliver it, and that our local post
office had not part in that process. We’re lucky here in these streets as we still
get home delivery.
Our local postmaster gave me a number to call which
was (of course) different from all the other numbers I had found online and
subsequently been calling. And I suppose the deed was done faster than one
might expect. It only took two and a half hours to know that my package was
indeed somewhere—unless it had been sent back. But by last night I had received
word of its precise location.
With any luck at all, by the end of the day today I will
have my package in hand. The only unknown portion of this equation is whether
or not I will chide the postal people for being “wary” of the dangers on our
street, when three other delivery services were not.
There is a famous quote that goes back to ancient
Greece, about the nobility of those who work delivering mail. It goes, “Neither
snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the
swift completion of their appointed rounds.” I think that’s true, for the most
part.
But no one every said anything about road construction.
Love,
Morgan
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
No comments:
Post a Comment