You've got mail!

I've come to the conclusion that I will never take the mail service for granted ever again!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a big fan of them delivering my mail 15 miles from here (happened - more than once), but the concept of mail coming directly to my house? I'm kinda liking that.

Let's go back to the beginning.
When we moved into this house, this is what we had for a mailbox:

It wasn't beautiful, barely functional, but it was free and it was low on the priority list of things to upgrade. You know, after a while it kinda grew on me in the "I live in the kountry" sorta way.

Don't you just love the "shotgun blast distressing" look?

And then something tramatic happened!

DOH!

It really sucks to have that happen in the middle of winter. Especially this past winter as there was rarely a moment all year that there wasn't snow on the ground, then when there wasn't, it was so soaking wet you sank up to your ankles in mud just walking across the road.

Option B:
Drive to town to pick up mail.

Doing the math, over 2 months, 4 trips a week approximately, 17 miles round trip, works out to 544 miles!! I estimate that's 27 gallons of gas, and at $2.60 a gallon... Well, that's $70.20 just to pick up my bills.

It's quite anticlimatic and frustrating to go pick up junk mail!

Anyway, warmer weather started to poke around, and so Tanner and I did some mailbox shopping. I finally decided on a simple number from Walmart made by Rubbermaid. Not because I loved it, but because it was cheapest.

Mailboxes are expensive!

I get it home, and start to put it together. Long story short, it won't even assemble correctly, it's a piece of junk!! Not to mention, I'm having moments of feeling like I'm selling out. Like I moved into an HOA... which I would NEVER EVER DO. I'd live in a house made of pallets first.

(No offense to those that live in HOA's, I'm sure you are lovely people and have lovely homes. I'm just too non-conformist. You don't want my type as a neighbor. ;)

I give up, and take the stupid mailbox back to the store and then put Tanner on a mission. It's his job to build the post to put a metal mailbox on.

He did a good job, we did have to end up making the post longer and had to recut it. I will say that there were more arguements over this stupid mailbox than there has been over that whole entire chicken coop yet! I was never so glad that the STUPID mailbox got up already.

Can you tell I'm still riled up?

I think the only thing that can lower my BP over it at this point, is to walk 50 feet in my jammies (at 3 p.m.) to go get my mail.

At my own house.

And I don't even have to put on eyeliner.

Life is good.