grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

got mail?

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I’m thinking of wallpapering our new Fayetteville bedroom in Pottery Barn/Williams Sonoma catalog pages. Or maybe using it to wrap presents for the remainder of my gift giving days. Or I’m certain I could make a door wreath from the glossy pages of J Crew catalogs and post the crafty picture to Pinterest.


When was the last time I ordered or purchased anything from Pottery Barn? I have no recollection. Nevertheless, I receive  Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Teen, Pottery Barn Bed & Bath, and Pottery Barn Baby every single week. I ordered a quilt from Pottery Barn Teen when Tate was 10. Nine years ago. So in the company’s fancy computer tracking systems, why don’t they make note of this purchase? Seems logical that whoever was using that quilt with bright blue stars in 1992 has probably moved on to a different style. That little boy has one year of college under his belt and buys only gray bedding and clothing. And it goes without saying, if the household has a dorm dweller, there probably aren’t any babies at home to buy from Pottery Barn Baby. What a waste of trees.

Of course many teenagers have babies so maybe people go from buying teenage room accessories to bumper pads for the grandbaby cribs without a beat. But wouldn’t it be more prudent to wait until someone actually buys something or at least visits the baby website before spending all that company money to print and mail out senseless catalogs all over the country daily? I bet most teenage parents can’t afford Pottery Barn… 

I am going to spend time someday somehow getting myself off these lists. So far the catalogs haven’t followed us to our new address in Arkansas.  

the mail came!
These catalogs do provide entertainment for Lucy and Annabelle who wait for the mailman, snatch the catalogs from the mail slot and shred them as fast as possible. I take these shredded catalogs, as well as the unshredded ones, and immediately drop them into the recycle bin where I suppose they are recycled into more Pottery Barn catalogs. 

We recently received a Restoration Hardware Catalog larger than the old Sears Christmas Catalog we received as a kid.  Remember when the only catalog was from Sears? We couldn’t wait for that catalog – the official countdown to the Christmas season! Staci and I studied it for weeks, memorizing the toy section, circling our favorite items. Afterwards we used it to cut out paper dolls. This was recycling at its best. Restoration Hardware doesn’t even have any people in it.

One day last year the postman delivered a whole stack of books to our house. Hardback novels. They were wrapped in cardboard and stacked on the front porch addressed to Sam Smith. We do not know a Sam Smith, nor did a Sam Smith ever live here. But apparently he joined a book of the month club for our house.

I loaded up the books and took them to my neighborhood post office where I waited in line forever to complete an official form for a postal investigation with the U.S. Postal Inspector. The postal worker thought Sam Smith was the victim of possible mail fraud. Someone had enrolled an unsuspecting Sam Smith in a book club, gardening club, knife club, etc. all at a bogus address – ours. If we didn’t return everything – if we simply threw away all the notifications and bills that would follow, the company would be out money/books and Sam Smith’s credit would be harmed. What about us??? Our porch was being bombed every afternoon with towers of books that I was expected to haul down to the post office on my lunch break. I was having flashbacks of my Columbia House membership in 1975 – 25 eight-track tapes for one penny….Columbia House thankfully lost track of me in Waco.


It became immediately apparent the postal lady left her sense of humor at home and was sucking all the fun from the immediate postal area.
Me: Sam Smith is already getting bills for this stuff.
Sourpuss: How do you know?
Me: Because I opened some of the letters to see what they were.
Sourpuss: Opening someone else’s mail is illegal. You cannot do that. Blah Blah. Stink eye…
Me: So stop bringing me someone else’s mail! Return stink eye…
So now I’m guilty of mail fraud and this exchange has likely been recorded in my permanent file.


We still get tons of mail for Sam Smith which I mark “Return to Sender” each time. We also receive mail for the Hultses who lived here 10 years ago, my first ex-husband, John’s first-ex-wife, and Kelsey’s first ex-boyfriend who wrote down his name and our address at a college fair in 2006. How on earth will the government shut down some of the post offices? Who will shuffle around junk mail door to door? Is the government creating this junk mail to keep the post office entitlement program alive? 

After ten days in Fayetteville, we returned to a two foot stack of mail. Mostly catalogs. Some duplicate catalogs sent to me, John and Kelsey. Tate received mail from Oaklawn Park. My first ex-husband received his AARP card – and so did John. Sam Smith received mail too.  I promptly returned it to Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

talya


Musical Pairings:


Elvis Presley, “Return to Sender”

Lucy didn’t care for this
political ad



“Discourse is fleeting, but junk mail is forever.” Joe Bob Briggs

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Comments

  1. You can’t tell me anything about mail!! It is driving me crazy. I have about five bills addressed to Plano, returned to Osceola, stamped and returned to Plano, only to be forwarded back to Osceola. AND, and the magazines have found their way to my Osceola address. I have quit forwarding mail completely, but the Post Office won’t quit. I even talked to the head postmaster of Plano to no avail. I give!! Loved the blog. Talya’s mom

  2. Oh, help is on the way!!! I got an e-mail that read: “Dear Barbara, You are approaching the end of your mail forwarding period. Your mail stop forwarding date is June 30, 2012.” GREAT, ONLY ONE MORE MONTH, and by then I will be back in Arkansas. Talya’s Mom

  3. Another belly laughing blog! I think it is a pre-requisite to be a sour puss to work at the post office. We get mail for my daughter that lives near Des Moines and has never lived at our current address and has never forwarded anything here but somehow she “gets mail” here after six years of our moving and 15 years since she left our home in Des Moines.

  4. Oh, I got a little catalog from Harbor Freight Tools today.It had my address, but the addressee was Jennifer J. Sprinkle. Jennifer did a much better job of forwarding her mail than I did: I have lived here five years, and this is the first piece of mail she has gotten. theBAT

  6. Oh, you know what else works? Don’t tell the USPS that I did this, but…

    When I moved from my apartment to my current house, I was getting mail for every past resident of the apartment, some of whom had skipped town owing thousands of dollars in late fees to Blockbuster (how do you run up an $1100 bill at Blockbuster?), Verizon ($643), and others. The police came to my apartment twice at near midnight looking for Greg Brown (Mr. Blockbuster).

    I wanted to forward my mail to my new house, but get rid of all the rest.

    So I got a post office box. For three months. I forwarded everything to that. Sure enough, after only a few days, all that mail–including some for previous residents of my house in Northport, AL, from which I had moved into the apartment in Atlanta–began to arrive. For the stuff that was mine, I dutifully sent in a change of address form. For everything else, I just chucked it in the garbage.

    After three months…I very calmly and with a great big smile returned the key to the USPS and didn’t look back.

    Am I sorry for sticking the next unfortunate owner of box whatever-it-was in Duluth, GA with forwarded mail?

    Not. In. The. Least.

  7. And I’m sure you know this already, but you will get even more garbage mail at your new house because public records are available saying that you recently purchased real estate. I love that. No, really.

Food. Farm. Garden. Life.

THANKS FOR READING!