A Bad Case Of Rat Poisoning

I want those 3.5 hours of my life back. The 3.5 hours it took for me to haul the #1 son to town for basketball practice and wait and bring him home. The 3.5 hours in which we also went to the dead-mouse-smelling Post Office to take mail that belongs to somebody else, yet was left in our mailbox on Saturday. And to pick up a flat box for #1 to send in his old phone to get $195 for it from Gazelle. Gazelle sent him the box, so the shipping will be at no cost to #1. And it won't stay flat. He has to fold that box to fit his phone.

#1 was going to sell that phone to a kid at school, but that kid has been stringing him along since last Fall, always something coming up to deplete the funds he was going to use. Then after Mr. S announced to the class that spiked hair was out of style, while gazing unabashedly into the eyes of that kid, the kid was absent the next day, and then we were off for all this snow, and, well, Gazelle sounds like a surer thing than the kid buyer to me. He's not like the kid buyer from church, who puts his money where his mouth is, money earned from a hard summer of mowing lawns, not breeding exotic rabbits and chickens who freeze to death in the balmy temperatures of a globally-warmed Autumn, just in time to ruin a backroom phone transaction. Oh, and a belated "Way to go, Mr. S, for sucking the life out of our January attendance rate, what with the public discouragement toward our budding fashionistas." Those Clog aficionados will be ashamed to show their feet come Springtime. Or now.

This mistakenly-delivered mail thing is getting out of hand again. We had a problem with it last year, one or two times per week, until I complained to the mail woman at the counter of the dead-mouse-smelling Post Office. Somebody must have gotten a reprimand. Not that I heard of any berserk postal-worker shootings in Hillmomba, but because the mail woman sighed and acted like this was not that dude's first complaint, and the mail has been straightened out. Until now. This is the second one since the first of the year. It was for somebody who lives on Horse Collar Road. Yep. That's how far out in the sticks you will find Hillmomba. But WE don't live on Horse Collar Road. Sure, it was the same four numbers, but just in a different order. Tough toenails, Mail Dude! I've taken the rural carrier test. All you have to do is know how to sort numbers and streets. That means you have to know your numbers, and understand alphabetical order. If you're coming down with dyslexia now, you need to pull over and let someone else take the reins. Horse Collar Road. Indeed. The rightful owner of that mail should be glad that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom took part of the 3.5 hours of her life that she wants back to make sure he got that bill from a surgery center. We can't have bills disappearing willy-nilly throughout the land.

After dropping off #1, The Pony and I headed to The Devil's Playground for some necessities like Tide and paper plates. There, we found a convention of home-schoolers and a passel of hill folk. It could have just been kids off from school today, but they were awfully respectful of The Devil's workers, and gazing in awe at the rolling tray of bread loaves. Not toddlers. Teenage home-schoolers. The hill folk had apparently come to town for some rat poisoning. At least that's what they asked their Devil's Helper for: "Where do we go for rat poisoning?" He was a bit taken aback. "Rat poisoning? Do you mean, like, rat poison?" The withered old crone nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah. Rat poisoning. Like D-Con." Perhaps that Devil's Helper jumped to the conclusion, as had I, that somebody had ingested rat poison, and now had a bad case of rat poisoning, and needed an antidote. And you know, there's no time to waste if somebody has rat poisoning.

I'd like to give some rat poisoning to the dead-mouse-smelling Post Office. Or maybe they already have some, which would explain the dead-mouse smell.