Handle With Care. Or Not.

At some point soon I will provide a detailed account of my last month or so- moving out of my apartment, living at my sister's house for 10 days, packing everything up, giving it away or shipping it home.

But for now I will say I just got back from Florida to find my two media mail boxes in the garage thanks to some family friends. I sent them media mail because they were filled with... media. And I figured, they're books- they can't get broken, so if they suffer some extra damage in transport, no big deal. Wrong. I went to open them, and one box was water-logged, but everything seemed alright, though there were books with wrinkled pages that were still damp all the way through. The second box saw worse treatment. The contents were completely smashed. Everything. Movie covers all smashed into pieces and ripped, and all of them had dirt and dust on the inside. New books were mangled and torn and covered in dirt. Books were shoved inside other books so the pages were all screwed up. The metal spine of my brand new cookbook was bent in odd directions and ruined- I don't even know how they did that.

And then I looked at the bottom of the box and decided the box must have gotten so soggy the bottom fell out because the sides were ripped along the seam and extra tape was wrapped around it. And then USPS tried to smash it all back into the box with wreckless abandon, which didn't work out so well for them, considering it took me about an hour to neatly pack the box in the first place so nothing moved or got jostled. I am a meticulous packer. I taped and re-taped the sturdiest boxes I had. And I know the box was not the problem because I sent two more FedEx and they got here just fine.

I guess I learned my lesson. Media mail sucks if you actually want your stuff to show up in halfway as decent shape as it was in when you packed it.

I am disappointed, and sad. New books and DVDs smashed, wet, and torn. On the bright side, my 7 seasons of The West Wing made it here fine- luckily they were wrapped in plastic, wrapped in bubble wrap, wrapped in tape.

Anyway. That's the last time I ever send anything media mail. USPS is officially on my "Dead to me" list. I guess I have to start one since everyone in the family seems to have one.


The end.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day Momma Dickerson.

As I said before, thank you for not being a crazy psycho mom who had my life planned out by the time I was born. Thank you for not making me be a doctor or lawyer (not that there's anything wrong with that... Erin and Dad). Thanks for not dressing me up and parading me around a hotel stage like the moms in "Toddlers and Tiaras" that I watched with Erin last night. It was disturbing. Little girls with fake eyelashes, $1500 dresses, make-up, veneers to cover their crooked and awkwardly spaced kid teeth, pedicures and a mother who kept telling her 6 yr old that "It hurts to be beautiful!"

Back to the point.

Thank you for not making us beauty queens, sports fanatics, or jerks. Thanks for spending so much time transforming us into dinosaurs, chickens, princesses, Hershey kisses, and Rockford Peaches every year at Halloween. Thanks for never letting us outgrow Easter Egg hunts, May Day baskets, pumpkin carving, or Christmas Eve programs and not letting us grow up too fast. Thanks for always making cool birthday cakes and hosting cool parties. Thanks for taking us on vacations that made us learn things (museums, National Parks, etc).

Thanks for reading us bedtime stories- you used to always yawn in the middle of the story. Thanks for teaching us to walk, read, write; for trying to teach us to sew, teaching us to drive, be respectful, be honest, and fairly normal. Thanks for attending all our school functions and parent-teacher conferences and trying to teach Megan and me AP Biology. Thanks for always being home when we got home from school. Thanks for making us play instruments and for putting money into our lessons. Thanks for letting Megan and I bother you with fake crime scenes, jumping out of dark corners to scare you, going to Chili's at midnight, and pretending to make fun of you. Thanks for always sending us Halloween and Valentine's Day care packages, etc after we moved away. And thanks for taking the time to yell at us and make us do chores. And thanks for always worrying about us and getting on our nerves all the time about what we were doing or where we were going.

I really don't know how you raised 6 of us without any of us dying or getting severely injured, and without smothering us in our sleep.

But here we all are, almost 6 college graduates, two computer programmers, a lawyer, a someday- police officer, a music teacher, and a someday- school counselor. Two high school salutatorians, and two just graduated at the top of their college classes. Six fairly normal, generally hard-working, successful, good people who all like to read are now in the world because of you.

Happy Mother's Day Mumsie.

p.s.- sorry, these are the only pictures I have