When you stay inside your house as much as I do now, you become overly reliant on anybody who delivers, whether it be Amazon, DoorDash, Instacart or, yes, the United States Postal Service. And while I have had fairly good luck with the first three, the good ole USPS ain’t what she used to be, before Louis DeJoy took over as postmaster general. (A more inappropriate last name would be hard to discover!)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to hire Jonathan, a homeless man I met one trash-day morning, to do my watering. Since I almost never leave the house, I don’t get to the bank to get cash. With every other service I’m able to use a debit card, a credit card, PayPal, some form of electronic payment. But what do you do when the person you are paying has no bank account? I racked my brain and finally came up with the idea of ordering Ralph’s cards for him, so that he could take them to the market and spend them like cash. It was something I could get via the mail, and probably safer for him to have on his person than cash, so we agreed to that solution.

I ordered my first batch of cards and they came in a few days. I paid him each week for three weeks, and then ordered a new batch. They either didn’t come, or I absentmindedly identified the envelope they arrived in as junk mail (I get SO much junk mail!) and threw them away. (The envelopes are quite unobtrusive, and come from the parent company, Kroger.) I went online to see what recourse I had—surely the cards have some identifying number that can be cancelled and applied to a new set? Nope. In the fine print of terms and conditions it says that lost or stolen cards cannot be replaced. So I was out a bunch of money. We looked through the recycling bin just in case they were in there, but didn’t find them.

That same day (last Wednesday), I ordered four more cards, and I scheduled Jonathan to do an extra project for me this week—my patio hasn’t been used for more than a year and is really filthy, so he said he would wash it out for me the way I used to do myself. I want to put these balmy fall days to good use by painting on the patio instead of inside at my desk. I can also paint some larger works that I’ve had on my mind for some time but that I couldn’t manage in the cramped quarters of my office/studio.

After the mail delivery today failed to bring the Ralph’s cards, I was faced with the prospect of having to cancel, because I have no cash in the house and no way to pay Jonathan. I wasn’t ready to give in, however, so I put on shoes, got my wallet and my keys, and headed out the front door, planning to drive to the closest Bank of America with a drive-through ATM machine to get cash, and then pick up dinner, also from a drive-through. This was kind of a big deal, because my legs are still really swollen and painful, but I took some Tylenol and decided to push through.

I got into the car, put my foot on the brake, and pushed the “start car” button. Arrows spun, lights flashed, messages popped up, but the engine didn’t turn over—my battery is dead. I haven’t driven it in a while, but it has almost always started up for me, even after a month with no outings. Phooey. Now what?

Just then my neighbor Phil came over to fetch my trash bins to the curb for tomorrow morning, so I asked him if I could borrow some cash from him and send it back to him via PayPal. Yes, he said, you can absolutely borrow the cash, but I don’t do PayPal, and I don’t want to join—just get it back to me when you can. I bless the day Phil and his family moved in next door—I mean, I liked them a lot from the day they arrived, but these past couple of years he has been an unexpected help in so many little ways.

So now I have to call the auto club tomorrow and get them to come out and jump-start the car, because I’m teaching a workshop on Saturday and it needs to run for me! I’m thinking I should probably wait until after Jonathan leaves, and in the meanwhile make an appointment at the dealership for a new battery and an oil change. It can’t be good for the car to sit in the driveway with all its fluids congealing for months at a time, and it’s sounded a little rough the past few times I’ve driven it. I’m not really feeling up to this outing, but the alternative is to cancel my workshop and I absolutely hate to default on promises, so…dealership. If they have time for me.

Meanwhile, in other interactions with the postal service, I ordered postcard stamps so I could mail the last batch of cards I have written begging residents of North Carolina to “VOTE BLUE,” and I’m beginning to worry that they are not going to receive said cards before the election on November 5th if I’m relying on the post office to both bring the stamps and deliver the postcards!

Not to mention that I mailed my OWN ballot a couple of days ago…please don’t let my vote go to waste! I hate that THAT MAN (and I’m not talking about DeJoy) has turned me into a raving conspiracy theorist. I fervently look forward to the prospect of a new regime and the incarceration of The Felon. And I think Jack Smith would make a wonderful Attorney General. Just sayin’. If he doesn’t want to do that, maybe he’d like to run the post office?