Rain nor Snow nor Sleet or Whatever

We have a community mailbox that's around the corner and down at the end of the other arm of our crescent. Some people find this really annoying because they grew up with to-the-door mail service, but I grew up in a little town where the post office was about a five-minute walk, so it doesn't really bother me. I do really dislike (and Eve was incensed by) the weird makeover they gave our bank of mailboxes a few years ago, where they made each individual box wider and much less tall, and the mail slot is halfway down the bank instead of at the top and much narrower. Maybe people were stuffing inappropriately big stuff in the mail slot? I don't think I have a pic of the old one because it was pre-cell-phone.

Anyway. When the kids were little, it was part of our routine to walk to the mailbox, in a long, meandering, staring-into-puddles and picking-up-sticks-and-acorns fashion. At some point they realized that sometimes fun stuff came in the mail. I had to temper their expectation by telling them that usually it was just junk. This resulted in Eve saying, after I pulled out the wad of mail and examined it, "dust dunk?" She has found this hilarious ever since, because she says she remembers thinking that she was pronouncing it perfectly and is bewildered by the auditory processing that takes place. Obviously we still say it if we pick up the mail together.

When we were ambling around the little stationery store in Westdale with Zarah a few hours before the musical, I picked up a box of cards and said something about sending 'snail mail'. Eve said "oh, right. That means, like, not email, right?" and when I said yes, she said she found it a little odd that we used the term snail mail, because if anybody said they were just going to mail something she wouldn't assure they meant email. This made me stop and think - I guess we don't need to say it, but at some point the retronym came into being and it's just fun to say? 

Remember in December when Canada Post went on strike and I was really sad that I couldn't send my usual whackload of Christmas cards? And I told myself I would send cards after Christmas, while knowing full well that my Christmas exuberance would taper off into January depression and it would almost impossible? It's so hard to imagine in December what I'm going to feel like in January. And then one day in late December, I felt like the actual light outside changed, and I knew I wasn't going to escape.

Anyway. I still have the Christmas cards out and originally I thought it would be amusingly off-kilter to just send Christmas cards, but I don't think I can, so I got out non-Christmas cards and put a basket of cards and writing stuff on the chair beside where I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop. And I am ever-so-slowly getting cards sent out. 

Naturally Engie is lapping me. Is it inspiration or competition? Jk, I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting actual mail among the 'dunk'. This has been a particularly good week, with a postcard from Suzanne yesterday and a card from Engie today - I'm making myself wait until after I stretch and shower to open it because I just walked Lucy after rolling out of bed and I am gross.

Does it matter that my wifi password is visible here?