Neither Rain nor Snow - Carrying the mail 101

Writing for most of us is not the most dependable way to make a living, or even spare change it seems until you get some sales and get going. So most of us have at least one other job or work at home caring for their children.

I work as a Rural Carrier for the United States Postal Service.

Sometimes people think, like I used to, that mail carriers have it easy. They just show up at the post office. Someone loads their mail for their route in order into their vehicle. They then proceed to just amble along and poke the mail into the mail boxes. This couldn't be further from the truth!


Rural Carrier delivering from the passenger seat. Many of us drive and deliver from the middle of the front seat or straddled on the console.


The truck arrives in our small town from the distribution center around 6 am. The mail handlers and clerks unload racks of mail - presorted letters, letters that weren't able to be presorted, tubs of presorted flats and huge bins of flats (magazines, oversize envelopes, newspapers, advertisements) that must be sorted within the next two hours so that the arriving carriers can 'case' them for delivery and leave the PO by around 9:30 or 10:00.

All of this activity has time, volume and accuracy factors. The carriers arrive an hour or so after the delivery truck and begin casing the presorted letters. Though the letters are presorted, each piece must be verified to make sure it isn't out of sequence and delivered to the wrong box.




Mail Carrier casing mail.

Then each carrier must collect the 35lb totes of flats that must also be cased around the letters in order of the route. Once the mail is cased and packages sorted by customer and marked, it must be 'pulled down' into smaller bundles and transferred to large tubs which can hold several hundred pounds of mail and packages.


The tub is rolled out to the carrier's truck or SUV or car. Each carrier loads the contents of the tub into their vehicle making provisions for bad weather. Most routes require the carrier to be finished by mid afternoon.

In the case of Rural Carriers these are their personal vehicles and at today's gas prices most carriers don't make enough off their gas and maintenance allowance to cover anything but gas.

Add to that wasps, snakes, birds in mailboxes, dogs, irate customers and highway hazards and you wonder why mail carriers don't get hazardous duty pay.






A recent web article reported that during National Dog Bite Awareness week a customer sicked their pitt bull on the carrier for trying to deliver a certified letter! Recent statistics pegged the number of dog bites nationally at 4.7 million, with letter carriers comprising the third-highest number of victims.

That's why when someone says to me - Oh, it's okay, he won't bite - I stay in my truck.

Mail carriers really don't want recognition though it's nice to receive appreciative comments from customers who realize how tough the job is. But next time you see a mail carrier driving along the shoulder, maybe you could move over and allow them onto the highway. Or maybe you could clean the wasps and birds nests out of your mailbox.

Next time you hear about national security, think about the mail carriers who keep your mail safe.

But even if you don't, we'll still keep doing what we do, because we believe we provide an invaluable service, especially in these days of high gas prices.

Lions for Lambs

CFM and I were watching the movie Wednesday night and I made the comment to my CP, Leah, that I loved his movies and tought he should have won a best actor award by now.

She said she thought no matter what movie he was in, he's still Tom Cruise.

OKAY, I have to admit. She's right. I sat through the rest of the movie thinking Tom Cruise just doesn't seem like a senator. He just seems like Tom Cruise.

I DID LOVE HIM in Top Gun though. I've watched that movie 50 times - everybody at my house used to run when it came on.

Who are your favorite actors?

Weekly Quote

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Virginia Woolf

High Speed Access

Welcome to my world. For the last six years or so the phone company has been giving us the same old line. "I'm sorry. DSL is not yet available in your area but it may be in six months. Which leaves us with only two options, dialup (one dialup server handles all the small ISPs in the area - the standard connection is 19,000bps) or satellite.

Satellite is like fast dialup only with interruptions for storms in our area (Central Louisiana) and our gateway (Duluth - you got it, Minnesota)

Imagine you sit down to your browser and click a bookmark from your list, then you count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleve.. okay it's up. Instead of nearly immediate access to pages like real high speed internet, satellite users wait for 8-25 seconds for pages to load.

There are a few issues with that: First, I don't have the time to wait on page after page to load, to follow other links, to input, to update. True high speed would save me a couple of hours a day.

The service is only 'good' in perfect weather. If a thick white cloud shows up to the south, the speed slows down to a crawl.

And the cost of satellite, the medium plan is $70 a month! This is a prime source of irritation to me when the bulk of satellite users are in rural areas without other options and yet the government has yet to do what they've promised for years - make fast access to internet available for everyone.

The problem is not technology or distance from the local station because in Mississippi my friend who lives 30 miles from the closest station has received high speed access a year ago through fiber-optics.

So, give me a little feedback. I know I'll just be even more irritated but I'd like to know what's the average length of time it takes for your pages to load.

Patting myself on the back

Okay, a couple days ago I mentioned my being 120 lbs. Ha! You should not take that to mean my current weight.

ALTHOOOOOUGH, the change of eating habits I started with the Six Week Body Makeover two? months ago is still going very well. I'm going to actually admit to how much I weighed when I started. And then I'll include - gasp, I can't believe I'm going to do this - a picture of then and now. Hey, the picture I saw a couple weeks ago of me just before I started that diet convinced me that I do NOT want to look like that again. I don't want to eat like that. I don't want to FEEL like that.

I'm not trim and in shape by any means but I fit into a reasonable size, and don't look like my mother. I'm also eating MUCH healthier and considerably smaller portions. Basically this diet, after you determine the types of foods for your body type, is eating 5-6 very small portions of food at regular intervals.

I used to be proud of keeping up with the men at the all you can eat buffet. Typical American glutton. And that mentality got me into a lifestyle of bulimia from my teens. Once I quit, my weight gradually began increasing because I couldn't control my calorie intake.

My aunt sat next to me one time and said, "Ok, now put your fork down and chew. I couldn't. I felt like I was imprisoned. I literally couldn't take my hand away from the fork.

Something has to change for you to be ready. Some catalyst - a bad doctor's visit, needing a new wardrobe, feeling awful - something. In my case, I had always said I wouldn't allow myself to get as out of shape and overweight as my mother. Now, I'm five-two and wear a size 3!!! wedding ring so I figured FAT for me would be 150.

Three months ago I stepped on the scale and I weighed 155! I must have made an unconscious decision because two days later, the Six Week Body Makeover DVD arrived. And I haven't looked back. It's very inconvenient when you're away from home, or even at home, to have small meals prepared so that you can eat breakfast, midmorning, lunch, mid afternoon, dinner and then late evening. It's even harder to find the foods you need on the run unless you live in a big city where the grocery stores have healthy salad bars. So I broil my chicken and beef and vegetables for the week on Sunday. I make up a batch of rice noodles, get a can of seasoned mustard greens and snack through the day on my little pre-portioned meals.

I thought about Nutrisystem. But frankly, I didn't want to spend that much and once the Nutrisystem meals stop coming you have to learn to do it on your own. This plan appealed to me because of the educational aspect. I understand more about the incorrect foods I was eating. For instance, rice is complex, natural carb which sustains energy when you're exercising even. But pasta is pounds of flour, worked and compressed into a form that is not as good for you. An orange is better than orange juice because - duh - how many oranges does it take to make a glass of orange juice? So much common sense but also some good information.

WELL, here it is - OMG - I can't believe it's only been seven weeks! And I'm down to 135. It feels so good not to be quite so overweight. But I'm going to keep eating like this and get down to what they used to call a 'set point', a natural place for your weight to rest. And I must get back to that treadmill at my target heart rate.

Yeh, me! For once I didn't do it for anyone BUT me. That's probably why I was successful.

Honey, Hold That Tree

This week I read a couple blog posts, one by Robin Rotham from April 27 and Danielle Baer's that reminded me about the differences in the way men and women think. I thought of an experience that gets a new life everytime my husband wants help doing some task that's a little out of his league. His adventures would have made a great TV series like the one with Tim Allen.

He was cutting down some small pine trees near the house. He...misjudged the direction it would fall. Hint: NOT away from the house. So his solution was to put a rope around the tree and hand it to me, all 5'2" 120 lbs of me, and say, "Here, hold that tree!"

It doesn't take a very astute person to know what would happen next. And he has returned to this methodology many times. The reason?

Ever tried to interrupt a man while he's working on a household project? I get, "I can't talk to you right now" or "What! I'm busy." Guys are TOTALLY in the moment.

Next time you hear a meditation guru say something like 'be present' or 'be in the moment' just think like your man. They have it down pat.

Happy Anniversary

Today was my parents' wedding anniversary. The Washington Post had a huge picture of my mother and her twin and their double wedding at a large church in D.C.

Here's one of my favorite pictures of them.