You've Got Mail

I took a mail day today. This is similar to the common sick day, however no illness is involved. It is a day in which you stay at home and wait for the mailman. I even did this honestly, calling my workplace late last night and explaining my FedEx dilemma, having already missed the first delivery attempt of the piece of technology that would forever change my life. Oddly, my anguish was understood. And so I spent the majority of my day in my tiny abode, awaiting my Knight in Vehicular Armor.

The doorbell doesn't work at my place. I've lived here for over three years and have only heard it ring once. And when it did, I just stared at the door in amazement, ignoring the poor soul who actually wanted to come in. Because of the lack of chime, people must knock. FedEx men, charming as they are, have not figured this out.

I was typing away by the front window, the blinds up so that I could see strangers coming and going, when I noticed a man with a package stepping off the front porch. I must have been so caught up in the Tuscan-inspired resort wedding I was describing (I'm running out of inspiring nuptial adjectives, folks) that I didn't hear the doorbell that DOESN'T WORK. And there was no knock. He just walked away.

I have no pride when it comes to mailmen. In Vancouver, when the long-awaited Purolator man returned my camera to me, I greeted him in a rather scandalous tank top with wet hair dripping down my back, a hoodie half on (only because I was trying to dress as I ran for the door). So the fact that I was in old slippers and baggy sweatpants did not deter me from running out my door and across the front yard to fetch him. (Yes, I just used the word "fetch." But not in a Mean Girls way. Or in a "You look rather fetching this evening" sort of way either. But I digress.) I was that crazy woman waving her arms and shouting, the one you probably intentionally don't look in the eye when you meet her on the street. The one with the fashion sense of a toddler, the grace and poise of a fourth-grade boy in dance class, and the speech patterns of Tarzan.

But he stopped. He turned. He didn't even ask me my name. He just handed me my future in a box. I thanked him profusely, signed his high-tech thingamabob/freeze ray, and waved goodbye to my hero of the day.

Fast-forward a few hours.

The MacBook sits on my table, partially opened. While it whispers to me, I ignore it. Because as much as I want to play with it, I must resist the temptation to spend the rest of my evening (and into the wee hours of the morning) with a piece of aluminum when I must first fire off invoices created on a clunky PC that deserves a noble retirement. Oddly, now that the laptop's here, the eagerness has settled into simple comfort. There is no rush. We have forever to get to know one another.



Hmm. Maybe this is what it's like to be a boy. To be excited by the chase. To be more concerned with the acquisition than with the relationship. To profess love for something not there, and then to back off a little once it's sitting in the kitchen. Not that girls sit in kitchens.... Oh, wait. No. Never mind. I take back the entire analogy.