Multiply 365 Day 321 - Early Christmas

Season's greetings everyone. Hopefully everyone is having a good December thus far. Me, well I celebrated Christmas on Friday. It wasn't a regularly scheduled Christmas, it was more of an impromptu one.

The thing is, I decided about a week or so ago I was going to send Jen her Christmas present because I wanted to make sure it had reached her before the holiday rather than after. So sometime around the middle of last week I went ahead and wrapped her gifts, filled out the required customs forms and shipped them off to her. In the box I had sent her a movie (“Better Off Dead”, which unbelievably she had never seen), a CD (The Best of Etta James, we both love the song “At Last”) an Amazon Kindle, a stocking with lots of sugary treats and some hopefully useful items like pens, a mini stapler and the like.

Now I knew from previous experience that if I send something to her, especially a box, it will take 5 or 6 business days to reach her under normal Priority Mail shipping (all packages leaving the US must go at least as Priority Mail, though you can upgrade to a faster service), so I wanted to make sure her gift arrived on time. I figured it would arrive around Thursday or Friday of this week. Meanwhile, Jen had told me she shipped my gift on Wednesday of this week and I should have it by Monday or Tuesday of next week. Not that she had to get me anything, I already told her that she was a gift enough, but she wanted to send me something anyway.

So Friday I get out of work a little bit early and I decide I am going to go home and just relax a little bit, no need to be anywhere until Saturday. I run a couple of errands downtown, just picking up some things for my apartment and because I took a different bus home I was actually back at my apartment about 15-20 minutes ahead of schedule. Usually the first thing I do when I get home is check my mailbox, even before I unlock my apartment, so I stick the key in the box and turn it and there is two things in there, one was just a sales flier which I ended up throwing away, the other was a parcel card from the post office. Cards are put in boxes when a package to be delivered is too big to be left on the doorstep. So I drop my stuff in my apartment and head over to the Post Office.

As I am walking over to the Post Office I start examining the parcel card. Parcel cards don't tell much, only that there is something to be picked up and what time it will be available and some other very basic information. As I am examining my card I look and where it says from is simply listed as Canada. Now all of a sudden I am nervous. Because I know Jen lives there, but her package isn't due till next week sometime, so why would I be getting a parcel from Canada? Then it hits me, I must have fucked up my customs form, because they ask you to list everything in the box when you send a parcel, and I didn't write each and every thing I put in Jen's Christmas stocking (yes, I sent and actual stocking), I just wrote Christmas stocking on the customs form, and now because I didn't claim each individual item they refused to allow the package into Canada, and instead sent it back to me.

So I am walking to the Post Office in a pretty somber mood, because until I fix everything and send it back out, with holiday mail traffic, there is a very good chance she will not get her Christmas presents till after Christmas. I am just not looking forward to this at all.

I get to the Post Office and stand in line and eventually I am up at the counter where a mail lady (as close to an oxymoron as I will type this evening) takes my parcel card and asks for my ID. I show her that, she goes in the back at typical mail employee speed, which is just short of not moving at all, and proceeds to bring out a white box from the back. Now I am really depressed, because I know Jen's package is also a white box, and when it is set on the counter I have the bottom of the box facing me, with a bar code and I know for a fact that the box I sent Jen also has a bar code on the bottom. Anyway, the mail lady says I have to sign something, then asks for my address and I am thinking, what the fuck do you need my address for, just to return a package I had already sent. But I do as I am told, sign my life away and am given the box so I can go.

As I get outside the Post Office I look at the top of the box and I don't recognize the handwriting. I just know that it isn't mine. That is when I start to read it and see that the package isn't from me at all, but addressed to me. And there is an express mail sticker on it. Jen had apparently sent my Christmas gift express, just to make sure it arrived before I went home on vacation the following week. Needless to say I was shocked.

So I get home and about an hour or so later I see Jen come online, and I tell her what happened, relaying the story much as I have done for you. She tells me to hold on a minute and gets on her laptop so we can talk via voice, rather than typing everything and wants me to open my gifts. Let me just say wow and double wow. I certainly didn't expect that. There are times when you get presents and they are okay and all, I mean you don't return them, but you know that whoever bought them did so more as a guess than because they actually know you. That wasn't an issue here. In the box were 3 different seasons of The West Wing on DVD, Band of Brothers on DVD, a Penguins jersey and a Penguins t shirt. I was just stunned, plain and simple. And as we talked I found out that not only did my package not get sent back by customs, but was apparently waiting for her at home when she got off work, so a few hours later we got to repeat the process in reverse with me listening to her as she opened her Christmas presents as well.

Christmas came early and not in any sort of traditional fashion, certainly not in a manner I had planned on celebrating it, but still it was spent with the woman I love and I really can't complain about that.