2 Post Offices too many

This morning I decided to drag Mr. Chap Mustache (aka Dorian) to Open Gym, the scene of the crime that left him with this horrible cough and chapped face, and also to the post office right across the street. I hate that post office, but it is more convenient than the one near the steak house 2 miles away. But I did need to mail off the baby jacket to my cousin, so I braced myself for the worst, or so I thought.

My first mistake was asking Dorian if we should go there first or the gym first. (Stupid question.) We go into the gym only to find that no one we know is there, so we may as well have gone to the post office first. Instead I am forced to suffer through the bizarre spectacle of a mother feeling the need to show off her belly (I'm assuming she was proud of how skinny she is) by running along one of the walls while wearing low rise jeans and a half shirt and having her husband throw a ball at her so she could jump and dodge it. She might as well have been screaming "Look at me!" like all the other children there.

We prepare to leave and I use "the facilities" but Dorian claims not to need to pee, so we head across the street. Of course there is a line and of course the person at the head of the line has no less than 10 padded envelopes to be weighed. This was Dorian's cue to announce how much he wanted to go home. Impeccable timing that kid has. I tell him how patient he needs to be while I am impatiently scouting the potential postage needs of the other 4 people ahead of me and trying to remember how much time is left on my parking meter. (None.) Therefore, Dorian must announce now that he needs to pee. I drag him around the building and ask one of the guys if there is a restroom. "Across the street at the rec center," he replies. Oh, what a card! I tell Dorian he will just have to wait, wondering if this will cause me more stress than leaving and coming back would, and then I see that yet another person would be ahead of me and the line has not moved.

After letting Dorian pee in the parking lot in front of the car because I didn't want to carry my box back up another flight of stairs and because he deserved to have to pee in the cold, we set off for the other post office. Usually there is a super nice guy named Pete who is quick and friendly and makes me wonder where the term "go postal" ever came from. Not today. Today there was a woman who, while friendly, was not so quick and who saw fit to answer the phone twice even though she had 3 people in line. The woman ahead of me finally gets to hand over her box, which is not taped closed, and right before she pays she yells, "Wait!" For chrissakes, people. Can't we get through one simple transaction? She reaches into the box, shuffles the contents around and pulls out... her car keys.

Two minutes later, little Lincoln's sweater and all the other most miniature clothing I had left were on their way to him 2 hours north. It probably would have been much less traumatic to have delivered them myself.