I cried.

I was sure I was made of tougher stuff. But apparently I'm not.  I like to think there are extenuating circumstances to my outburst.  Here's what happened.

My carrier (the one I sub for) had a family crisis and had to leave in the middle of her route yesterday.  I took over where she left off and with the help of two others we managed to get it done.  I was "on-call" for today as we just weren't sure the outcome of her crisis.

I didn't sleep well - expecting to be called and I woke early with the beginnings of a migraine.  Despite excedrine, my head pounded and quality sleep eluded me from 3:00 to 6:00 and completely eluded me after that. When 7:00 a.m. rolled around without a phone call I figured all was well and I could relax and perhaps tend to my aching head.  At 7:10 my new boss phoned and put me to work.  I took enough time to dress, shove two more excedrine in my pocket and grab a cup of coffee.  I was there by 7:30.  Terri (another carrier) was already sorting my mail.  Together we got all my mail done and packages sorted and I was out on the route by 1:00.  Terri had sorted my packages into "the beginning," "the middle," and "the end" of the route for me.

My head continued to throb so I reached into my pocket for my spare excedrine.  Yikes!  They were gone!  Apparent casualties of the chaos.  I would have to continue with a knife stabbing me in my skull.

Then the rain started.  It poured buckets.  My rain coat, admittedly more of a fashion statement than a utilitarian one, quickly became useless.

Quick recap.  My head was pounding and I was soaked to the bone.  My reading glasses were speckled with rain and I had to strain to see through them - which did not help the headache.  The windshield wipers were doing this horrible SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK that was almost more than I could take.

I was making the rounds in a mostly timely manner by the time I got to the middle of the route.  What should I find but a bunch of parcels from the beginning of the route.  Apparently Terri's idea of beginning/middle/end didn't match mine.  My fault.  I really should have clarified her interpretation of those terms.  So I had to go back and deliver missed parcels.

By the time I got back to the middle of the route the darkness was beginning to creep in and reinforcements were sent my way.  Frank showed up and took part of the end of the route.  I plodded on.  I missed some mailboxes (because they were on the opposite side of the road - a rare, but real event) I was circling back when Terri found me.  She took another portion of the end of the route.  I did a few more deliveries when Tim showed up.  We divvied up what was left, he gave me clear directions on where to go next and off he went.

I missed the turn, had to go round again.  Found where I was going, back tracked to deliver two packages on Elm street.  People should have their house number CLEARLY placed. I walked/trotted/ran up and down Elm with my packages trying to find the houses.  I found one and finally found the other.  It's numbers were facing in. . .  like toward their living room window.  I suppose it helps them to know where they live but it would be totally useless to ambulances, firefighters and mail carriers.  By now darkness had completely overtaken and I went to the last set of mailboxes on Elm.  Fortunately there was a street light overhead.  Unfortunately, the mail I had in my hand did not match the addresses in the box.  I did not know what to do.  I just sat there in my mail truck staring at my mail.  Staring back at the mailbox. Then back at the mail again.

By this point I had been on the move for 10 hours.  No breaks.  No lunch.  No food.  I had managed one bathroom break.  My head pounded.  I was soaked.  I was cold.  I was hungry and I had to pee.  Tears threatened but I held them at bay.

I finally decided I would just skip that box and have one of my helpers help me sort it out.  I went on to the next set of mailboxes.  This time there was no street light.  I stood there looking at the contents of the mailbox.  It looked something like this:

The mail I had in my hand looked similar.

I just stood there and the tears began to trickle for real.  I couldn't stop them. Fortunately they blended  with the rain dripping down my face so it was hard to tell.  About that time Tim showed up, like the Cavalry ready to save the day. Which he did.  He took pity on me.  Assured me that it was all okay, no one expected miracles from me and what I managed to contribute was a big help and then he took everything I had left and sent me back to the barn.  He promised he wouldn't tell anyone I cried.  I hope not.  It's a secret.

Work work work work..

I'm winding up my third week of training.  On Thursday I take my route out all on my own.  The full monte.  I'm more than a bit frightened.  Yesterday I took just under 1/2 the mail out and didn't get back to the post office until after 5:00 pm.  I  can't imagine how long it's going to take to do the whole thing.  Thank goodness the mail vehicle has headlights and I have a GPS on my phone.

One day of training was in Seattle.  I had to get up at 3:00 a.m. to make a 7:00 am class there.  That was bad but what made it worse was that the afternoon portion was spent driving around Seattle traffic in a right hand drive vehicle.  Seattle-ites beware - this goes on almost daily there.  Yikes!

One of the things I'm coming to terms with is the pay.  I worked for two weeks, 6 days a week.  I worked hard learning and training and practicing and doing actual work.  If you take my wage and deduct the unemployment payments I lost because I was working I made about $13.00 a week.  I just can't completely buy into this being a good idea.  Perhaps I'll be more enthusiastic once I get at least a portion of my unemployment back and I'm not working for free.

My routine with this new life has been get up, go to work, come home and collapse, too tired to move.  I fall asleep on the sofa well before bedtime.  Here is were I publicly say THANK YOU DEAR HUSBAND for taking care of me, the alpacas, the house, the dog, the cats.  THANK YOU DEAR HUSBAND for taking care of the opossum under the house.  THANK YOU for making dinner and doing the grocery shopping and making coffee on those early mornings.  THANK YOU for being there for me.

My great plan is that next week I'll have time to bake cookies, make pasta, knit, spin, weave, grocery shop, make dinner, clean the alpaca stall, vacuum, do dishes, do laundry, scrub the tub, clean the toilets, chop wood, rake leaves...  Hmm.. maybe working for $13.00 a week isn't such a bad deal.

(are you happy now Andrew?)

I have finished my second day of training with the USPS.  Today I got up before 6:00 am to make it to the training site by 8:00.  It was raining and it was dark.  It's been more than a year since I've had to do anything so horrific.

Training has gone fairly well so far.  There are 8 of us in the class.  I sit in the front row.  Not that I'm a kiss-up or anything.  I just want to get the most of out the class that I can.  Really.  On the first day I quickly became the teacher's pet when the projector connected to her computer wouldn't work.  She fiddled with it for 15 minutes and it was all I could do to sit there and watch without butting in.  Seriously.  I had a knot in my stomach while I watched her.  The sound would not work and to fix it she turned off the projector.  And still I sat there.  Arrghh.  She finally looked up from the equipment and asked if anyone knew how it worked.  I jumped at the opportunity and had it working in less than a minute.  All I did was press the "pc" button on the projector to tell it to connect.  Nothing technical at all.

Later she gave her computer password to her boss so that he could access her e-mail while she was gone.  The ex-network administrator in me almost exploded.  To make it worse she was making fun of my reaction today and gave ME her password.  This caused me great stress.  Also today I got a finger waggle and she said like me, she used to be loud and controlling - in a good way.  Harumph.

Despite the antics I managed to learn a lot.  That's good because there is a surprisingly lot to learn.  Our instructor says the job is hard and she guarantees that at some point we'll cry.  She even pointed to the one male in our class (an ex-military fellow) and promised that even he would cry.  I wonder.  I understand there is stress and the job is hard but I just don't believe that it can be more stressful or frustrating than it was to sit in the middle of a computer room floor at 5:00 in the morning with the main server in pieces around you, the clock ticking, having not slept in 22 hours, knowing that in a few more hours the first of 300 people are coming into the office expecting to turn on their computers and access their files... I cried then.  I think it's all perspective.

I still have a long way to go before I get to actually begin working.

Tomorrow I attend a 1/2 day of driver training on one of these:

I take a test in Seattle on Thursday.  Saturday I do a "ride-along".  Next week I have 3 days of  "Rural Academy" followed by several days of on the job training.  Somewhere around mid-November I get to actually go out on my own and the crying can commence.

Scramble!

Here in Northern Washington we had well over 3 months without rain.  Every glorious day was followed by an equally delightful glorious day.  The sun shone, the ground was warm and our grapes flourished.

Thursday of last week things changed.  Without warning (just because it was October was not warning enough!) the nights cooled and a hard frost hit our vines. 

It was time to pick.  NOW.  A second frost could easily ruin the grapes. Unfortunately the unexpected frost also hit our potatoes.  Although it would have been nice to leave them in the ground for a few more weeks the frost left their tops shriveled and dead.  It was time to pick those too.  Unfortunately we had to go out of town on Friday.  AAARRGGHH!

Peter started picking grapes and I tackled the potatoes.  Once the grapes were collected we started washing and plucking (that's removing the grapes from the stems), then we smashed them and got them in the barrel.  At 2:30 in the morning we still weren't done but exhaustion won and we called it a night.  The following day we rose early and continued washing and smashing until we got 'em done, finally leaving town at 4:30 p.m.   We have about 15 gallons of Pinot in the Pot.  Haha.. Maybe that's what we should name it!  Pinot in the Pot Wine.

My fingers were stained purple and I gleefully danced the happy dance at the idea that we were finally finished. Peter thought I was weird.  Oh well.

Of course, silly me, I had forgotten that we also have other grapes that were not hit by the frost - but WERE in danger from the threatening rain.  This week we scrambled to get the "barn grapes" picked.  The trellis they are on has collapsed from the weight of the grapes.  Peter picked high and I picked low, crawling around on my knees under the trellis.  I mingled with spiders and spider webs and horrid earwigs.  (I hate earwigs more than spiders and snakes and Jaywalkers and litterbugs.  Seriously.  Earwigs will make me crazy.  The other day one got on me and I screamed and jerked.  It fell to the floor where I stomped on it 6 or 7 times.  A bit overkill maybe but you can never be too sure when it comes to earwigs!)

But I digress.  We picked 6 bins full of grapes.

And the rain hit hard.  We had another marathon washing, plucking and smashing session.  We were up until well past midnight last night but managed to get them done!  We have about 30 gallons of this one.   I'm kind of afraid to do the happy dance again - but I'm doing it in my head. 

I was thinking that if you add in the hours spent weeding, and pruning and tending the grapes, plus the hours spent MAKING the wine, we would need to charge about $80.00 a bottle just to break even.  Luckily we aren't planning on selling it.