Remember - There's ALWAYS work at the post office.

This morning, as I sat down to journal my daily gratitude list, I was rudely interrupted by the child’s barky-sounding cough.  “Damn,” I thought to myself, “I’m gonna have to keep him home again today.”  Which, of course, means that I will need to make adjustments to my work schedule, which had recently been obliterated by my own 2 ½ week illness. 

So, I decided to tackle that task I have been putting off until the last minute – calling Covered California (the state department affiliated with Obama care) to register my family for health insurance.  Before the office even opens at 8am, their automated message warns that they are experiencing “unusually high call volume.” “Damn,” I think to myself as I hang up the phone, “that doesn’t bode well.”

I call back promptly at 8am and wait on hold for 40 minutes, when a representative comes online.  I tell him my issue with the website (it’s not working properly) and he tells me the issue is that the child is still enrolled in Medi-Cal, so their system cannot register him for Covered California.  When I inform him that my son was terminated from Medi-Cal in back in August of 2013, he tells me that I need to call Medi-Cal and tell them to cancel him and then call him back.  Right.  Like a phone call to a government agency EVER goes down like that. I ask to speak to his manager, to which he replies, “you can speak to my manager, but there is nothing we can do.” I tell him that his suggestion that I call Medi-Cal is not acceptable and can I speak to a manager and he tells me “there is nothing we can do from our end until Medi-Cal has cancelled his coverage.”  I say “I understand that, and may I speak to a manager please” and he puts me on hold.  Connie comes on the line after a brief wait, and then, her system goes down.  She needs to call me back later, so I wait for an hour for her call.  When I realize that time is ticking and I will need to leave soon, I hop into my shower, start using my wonderful Aveda scrub and my phone rings.  It’s Connie.  

And then I go to work and, as I have been out for a substantial amount of time, I am behind.  In my rush to catch up, I make several silly mistakes and then have a brief meeting with my client, who, in addition to being a bit put off at my errors (who wouldn’t? I was too), appears frustrated that certain items have not been finished in a timely manner.  And I am now put off.  Because I have been sick.  And when one gets sick, things just don’t get done.  But I leave the meeting feeling like a slacker.  

And then I get a text from home that the child is breaking the limits I have set for him.  So I call home all agro and call him a lying liar who constantly lies out of his lying liar hole.  I apologize later at home. 

And then I jump in the car to get some much needed stress relief in the sauna, when I get a call from Constance at Medi-Cal who gets frustrated by MY frustration and asks me “What do you want me to do?”  “I want you to fix your goddamn bureaucratic mess!” But I don’t say this, I say something else she doesn’t like and we part ways.    I feel so much anger and frustration at this point that I almost don’t go to the sauna…I would rather go home and beat the child.  But a little voice inside my head (my intuition, god, spirit, higher self, whatever), says “go to the sauna.”  And I listen.  This time I listen. 

So I am in the sauna sweating the day out and I meet a man in there who is heavy with prison tattoos and he tells me the story of his recent hip replacement and getting beat up by three LA cops on 9/11/09.  I tell him about my recently diagnosed fibromyalgia and we commiserate for a while about nerve pain, and he tells me that he “just wants to find someone who can take care of him, a woman, not no man,” and I realize that I’m gonna have to extricate myself from this conversation somehow…when in walks Paul, my mailman!

Paul is a lovely, young 40ish Polynesian-looking man with long dark hair and a lisp.  We get to chatting about how I fear the US Postal service will cut mail service (they have threatened this before) and he tells me that’s not going to happen.  That they just got a billion dollar contract with Amazon.com and are in great financial shape.  

“Oh good!” I say to Paul.  “Because the US Postal service is the best deal going.  I mean 49 cents to transport a letter all the way across the country?” And Paul tells me that the US has the cheapest rates of any country.  And I tell him that they could probably raise the rates and folks would bitch, but still use the service, “cuz there really is no substitute for the US postal service.”  And then we talk about how shocked we were about the $1 raise in Girl Scout cookies this year.  But I have had time to think about this one and I am thinking that they probably do a big jump once every 4 – 5 years so that it doesn’t seem like they are nickel and diming you every year….$4.00, then $4.25, then $4.50.  So I figure that the price will probably stay at $5 for a few years, but this year, I just couldn’t justify spending $5 on a box of cookies, even though I like the Girl Scouts. 

And then, whoa, I look at the clock and it’s been nearly 30 minutes in the sauna, and I have left two sick boys at home to take care of each other.  I say goodbye to Paul, goodbye to Prison-Tattoo.  And by the time I finish my shower, I feel pretty good about life. 

I leave you with this, from one of my top ten favorite all-time movies:

 “If you can’t take pride in your job, there’s always work at the Post Office”

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                           -  Bobby Taylor, Hollywood Shuffle