100 Words, 2025, Business, Family, Mysteries

Postal Game

19 Comments

It was bound to happen.  The postal tide has turned.

As a working young adult, YA now gets a chunk of mail.  Lots of credit card offers, lots of requests from charities. Stuff from her healthcare folks, catalogs for trendy clothes.  Very little useful stuff at all and almost all of it ends up in the trash.  But it occurred to me today when I was sorting our letters, all of which went into one pile for her, that she gets more mail than I do these days. 

Unfortunately the mail I do get is mostly the bills.

You get anything interesting in the mail these days? 

19 thoughts on “Postal Game”

      1. It is. As an old, fat guy who often walks around the neighborhood, I can’t help feeling as though I get the side-eye from passersby. In fact, my landlady openly asked if my background check would reveal something bad. At the time, that didn’t register as important. Now I have her trust and access to all the apartments and laundry coin holders.

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  3. Some necessary mail but rarely anything interesting. For the last couple of years, as Robin’s 100+ year old mother was failing, Robin—as power of attorney—has had as much of her mail as possible diverted to our home. Robin, after all, was paying all her bills and feared that her mother would lose or misplace them. Her mother died in December.
    Robin’s mother had been a donor to many causes and was on everyone’s mailing list. We’ve been getting piles of solicitations addressed to her at our address, many more pieces of mail than those addressed to us. That has begun to taper off now.

    All of our regular utility bills are set up on autopay. The utilities exhorted us to “go paperless”. Ironically, we still get monthly statements in the mail from them, statements that record the autopay but don’t reduce the paper.

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  5. Last Wednesday I mailed a letter to Daughter containing her birth certificate. She said she was ready to take possession of it and has a fireproof box to keep it in. I sent it by Priority Mail, which cost $10.00. It was supposed to get there on March 1. It didn’t. It didn’t get there Monday or yesterday. I was able to track the envelope yesterday. and it seems it sat in the Bismarck distribution center for 5 days, got transported to West Fargo, and had just left there and was in transit to Tacoma. Argh!!

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    1. I bought a pulldown window shade for Nonny after I visited her the first week of January. I mailed the next day (Saturday) They said it would get there on Tuesday. As always, I track these things, and after a week, it kept showing that it had been accepted, which meant they scanned it when I was there in the post office, but there was no other indication of where it was. I stopped by the post office three times over the course of the next three weeks and on the third visit the supervisor was actually rude to me and basically said it’ll get there when it gets there. Anyway, one month to the day that I mailed it, I got a notification from the post office that it was going to be delivered that day. Of course it wasn’t. It took four more days, but at least it was in the system, and I knew kind of where it was. Sad.

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    2. Just wait until the Post Office is privatized. Everyone in Dickinson will have to go to the post office for all their mail. No delivery. The savings on post boxes will be yuuuge!

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  7. RIse and Shine, Baboons,

    I have not received much of interest since the Christmas Cards have ended. But I have something to send to my niece. The USPS failed me last week. I ordered a set of the books of my mother’s stories to give to the New Baby due 3-31. I give each new baby a set of these. The company which prints them notified me when they sent them in plenty of time to get here. And the USPS did not get them here on time for me to take them to the baby shower in Iowa last week, so now I must send them to her. I think I will Fed Ex them because the USPS has been poor. It will only become worse given that the organization is under fire from the felon. I realize this is what he wants (using a private service), but I want them to get to her.

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  8. I usually buy from LL Bean or Lands End but I get many other catalogs from companies that I never will buy from. I think I will call them and ask to be taken off their list to save trees, paper and cost. I love bill autopay! I am trying some digital forms of magazines but found that some don’t allow printing or easy saving of recipes so paper form is preferable. Also their digital forms are sometimes awkward to go through ie the New Yorker. I only get digital newspapers and grateful I don’t have to dispose of newsprint.

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  10. I use autopay as much as possible for routine bills. I think it’s possible to get the paper statements stopped if you go into your account online and find where that setting is. It has worked for me.

    I donate to nonprofits that I’m afraid will lose some of their funding, or those that I feel strongly about: MPR, TPT, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon, The National Parks Association, The Alzheimers Association (because of my mom’s Alzheimer’s), and others. I get some magazines in the mail due to my donations. I enjoy these and I share them at the senior center here.

    Unfortunately, I donated to some politicians last year too – some of whom didn’t win. This is frustrating to me, and I know it is to many of you too. Now I’m getting tons of requests from politicians all over the country. I get these daily. It’s really frustrating. I have written and asked to have it stopped, but they still come.

    I had my mail held at the PO when I went to Mazatlan. When I went to pick it up, it wasn’t there. They had delivered it, even though I had selected the option that I would pick it up on the date noted on the form. When I asked about it, the clerk went to find my mail carrier. He came to the window and said, “Oh, you’re the one who gets all that mail!” Sheesh.

    I’ve never really had any trouble with the Northfield PO although I did try to check on the delivery of a gift I mailed to someone and the tracking number didn’t work.

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  12. Actually, one of the most interesting pieces of mail I get is the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer bi-monthly* magazine. Small format (maybe 5″ s 8″) – full of photos and articles about MN’s natural resources and outdoor recreation. My favorite feature is “Natural Curiosities”, where readers ask questions about (usually) wildlife they’ve seen and seek to understand. It is a free subscription to Minnesotans, but I send in a yearly donation..

    * every other month. I just looked this up, and bi-monthly can mean twice monthly, OR every other… Yikes.

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