Rainy Days and Mondays; or, The Map of Lost Mail is here!!

After many months of a drought, and restrictions on all water usage resulting in a yard that is an oh-so-attractive shade of dirt brown (because that's all there is---dirt), I'm happy to see rain the last few days. In fact, it's sort of like our rainy season here (okay, it's actually called hurricane season, but that tends to freak people out).

Pedro the Yard Chicken stopped by to pose in the dirt. 

We do have our "hurricane kit" all ready to go---lots of gallons of water, flashlights and batteries, canned and boxed goods. I have to admit, though, that the most exciting offering for hurricane kits is this product, which I believe is essential to any household facing the uncertainty of the season that is upon us:

It's kind of beautiful, isn't it? 

You don't realize how sunny and beautiful it is living in eternal summer until you have a few rain soaked days thrown in. You also haven't lived until your internet goes out every time it rains. At least we have power this time.

It wasn't all bad today; I did manage to FINALLY get a long-awaited package.

Living on a military base overseas means that your mail is sent to either an APO (Army & Air Force Post Office) or, in the case of the Navy, an FPO (Fleet Post Office). Our mail first goes to a sorting facility---at one time it was in New York, but now it's Chicago---and then goes to our tiny local post office, which doesn't have any actual mail boxes for its customers. When you send mail to me, it goes to the post office, and then someone from work has to pick it up and deliver it to my office mail box. The entire base works this way. The mail is only flown in two days a week now, so mail delivery day is exciting business around here.  Sometimes we get packages, which is for many of us, our connection to life's many necessities you can't find here, and if the sender happens to be my mom, the package is packed with Zero candy bars.

I don't know if you are familiar with Zero bars, but you should be. Hershey describes them as a "unique combination of caramel, peanut and almond nougat covered with delicious white fudge." You may know them as the white candy bar in the ugly silver wrapper. Don't let the ugly wrapper fool you. The Zero bar is, along with purple speckled butterbeans, bacon, and red Skittles, one of life's perfect foods.

A long-awaited package makes even the most dreary, rainy Monday seem a little nicer.

While visiting Mississippi in July, the first thing we did was find some sporting goods stores so we could buy the kids baseball gloves that fit. Our oldest had outgrown his little league glove, which we could have passed down to the youngest, except Boy #1 is a leftie and Boy #2 isn't. So onward we went, hitting several stores in Hattiesburg until we found two nice gloves that will hopefully serve the kids well for softball and baseball season.

Somehow in the frenzy of packing, the gloves got left at my parents, but never fear---my mom went down to the local P.O. a couple of days later and sent them (along with some Zero bars) via Priority Mail to Cuba.

I should also mention that Priority Mail still takes 3-4 weeks to get here from the States. I can't really tell if it's worth paying more to send anything that method, because once the mail hits the sorting facility in Chicago, it can't be traced.

And that can be a problem.

Gloves left Mississippi on July 19. Gloves hit the sorting facility in Chicago on July 21.

Gloves got to Cuba on September 9.

Gloves took a detour along the way

to APO 09833.

Not FPO 09593.

This would be Sharm El Sheik, Egypt.

Oops.

I have started a map to mark all the exotic and interesting places my mail has accidentally traveled while I'm stuck here in Hotel California land ("You can check any time you like, but you can never leave").

It's actually a positive thing that we've had such misfortune, since I managed to spend most of my high school World History classes doodling on my Trapper Keeper and daydreaming about Rick Springfield. Now I have motivation to break out a map and play Where In the World was My Lost Mail. If we've managed to have mail go to Muscat, Oman; Madrid, Spain;  Livorno, Italy; and Sharm El Sheik, Egypt in only 10 months, we'll have many, many more interesting locations for our Map of Lost Mail before we leave Cuba.

And in case you are wondering, Zero bars that have traveled through three countries and are a little melted still taste delicious.