Tuesday, December 14:

Our mailbox is a hole in one of the support posts on our porch. Mail goes in the hole and comes out through a flippy door in the back of the post. I've been meaning to post a picture of our mailpost for a long time because its my favorite part of the house.

When we first moved into the house back in August I used to entertain thoughts about decorating our porch in various strange ways. One thing that I thought would be cool was a scary fish mosaic on the mail post with the slot being the mouth of a big fish. It was a golden idea. To ensure myself that the project was underway I glued two glass eyes to the post.

As time marched on I began to realize that completing this project was going to be harder than I thought--mostly because I'm never home. In mid October I experienced a small burst of mosaic related enthusiasm which resulted in the addition of the pointy teeth. Unfortunately, the decorating urge occured after dark and I couldn't really see what I was doing so the teeth aren't lined up real well.

Here's something about our mail flow that you may not know: 60% of our mail is addressed to the home's previous five residents. Unwanted advertisements make up an additional 30% of our mail. Since I have all of my personal mail delivered to the store the only items I keep an eye out for at the house are our mortgage statement and the gas and electric bill.

Here's something about me you may not know: I expect incompetence from those around me. When I come home and my mail is blowing around because a mail individual tossed it on the porch instead of using the mail post I think nothing of it. I understand that people really don't know or care about what the hell they're doing and that's ok. I don't want most of my mail anyway.

Given my low expectations of people around me doing thier jobs correctly and the sporatic nature of our mail delivery I was not surprised when November's mortgage statement went missing. What did surprise me was when Don came into the store yesterday with a massive armload of mail that had been held at the post office since Oct. 22. Apparently one or more mail individuals refused to deliver mail to us since the teeth went onto the post. The note (the very first note we've seen since Oct.22, might I add) accompanying the giant mail pile read "MAIL IS STILL HOLDING AT THE POST OFFICE UNTIL MAILBOX DECORATIONS ARE TAKEN DOWN." Could they not have told us this a little fucking sooner?