Shenanigans of the USPS

I have just had the most ridiculous experience with the United States Postal Service.  I am inclined to rant and rave here about gross incompetence, rudeness and mountains of inefficiency, but instead, I'll just tell the story.  It speaks for itself:
We have been living in our new house now almost a week.. The previous owner left us a mail key but not the number for the mailbox.  I emailed the seller's realtor for the information, but unsurprisingly, he did not respond.  He has been a pinnacle of unresponsiveness throughout the entire house-buying process.  It's a miracle we ever completed the transaction, but I digress...
So as I approached a bank of mailboxes near the park intent on simply trying the key until I found the right box, I was dismayed to find there were literally hundreds of boxes.  Even if I wanted to stay there for hours looking for the right box, there was no way Mr. Impatient One and Mr. Impatient Two (a.k.a., Jack and Gage) would put up with that.  I was even more dismayed when I found there were two more banks with just as many boxes that could very well be ours.  So, on the advice of our realtor, I packed the kids into the car this morning, grabbed my HUD-1 form (proof that we bought the house) and headed over to our local post office to get the number for our mailbox.  When I got there, I parked, changed a poopy diaper in the parking lot and discovered upon approaching the counter, I'd accidentally brought the HUD-1 form from the sale of our old house instead of the purchase of our new one.  The postal worker behind the desk was unfazed, however.  She is apparently not that into security.  She was happy to give me the address for our mailbox bank and even the section number.  She could not, however, according to her, give me the exact number, because only the mail carriers have that information and they'd already left to deliver mail for the day.  It made absolutely no sense to me that the information wouldn't be stored somewhere at the post office, but I thanked her, strapped the kids  in the car and headed back to our neighborhood, figuring with the numbers narrowed down, maybe I could just try the key in each box in the section.
When I got to the mailbox bank, I was thrilled to see our mail carrier there.  I hustled the kids out of the car, stuffed Gage in the sling and grabbed Jack by the hand.  I hurried up to the lady sorting mail and said,"hi, we just moved in.  Could you tell me the number of our box?  She asked for the address, which I gave her.  She said,"oh, that's the bank over there," pointing about 50 yards away.  Seeing a carrier sorting mail at that bank as well, I thanked her and hustled us over, as he seemed about to leave.  Out of breath, I repeated my request for a box number for the third time that day (still very politely, I might add.) He replied in a very aggressive, irritated tone,"I can't just give that information out.  I don't know who you are.  You could be anyone.  You need to go to the post office for that." Gritting my teeth, I briefly recounted my post office experience to him.  He said,"Well, I don't know why they wouldn't give it to you.  They do have it."I asked if he'd give me the box number if I showed him the HUD-1 form.  He looked at me quizzically, but did not admit he didn't know what a HUD-1 form was.  He said he'd give me the number with picture id and something showing my name and the new address.  He said he'd be there for twenty more minutes, and just as I was about to hustle off to try to go home and get the right form and get back in time, he asked,"wait, what's the address?" When I repeated it, he said," Oh that's on her side," pointing back at the woman I'd talked to first.  I exasperatedly told him she'd said it was on his side, and he responded with an oh so helpful, "well, it's not." I clamored off back towards the first set of boxes with a sigh and a loud,"this is absurd!"
When I got back to the first mail carrier's set of boxes and told her what the other one had said, she said,"oh, did you say 'Cowden?' I'm so sorry; that IS mine!" Right after she said this, Gage, in the fastest baby move I've ever seen, grabbed the piece of paper out of my hand with the info on the general location of our box and crammed  it into his mouth, entirely obliterating all writing.
Luckily, despite our mail carrier's flakiness, she was willing to tell me which box was mine without any identification (so much for security.) She pointed me to the right box and... my key wouldn't work.  "F-ing figures," I thought.  Feeling thoroughly beaten, I asked her if I showed her my driver's license, would she please give me my stack of mail, and I'd figure out the key some other time.  "No problem," she said, and handed me a banded stack of mail without my showing her anything to prove my identity.  I glanced at it.  It was for the Patels down the street from us.  "Uh, this isn't mine," I said.  She looked at it,"Oh! Sorry.  What house number did you say again?". I repeated it... AGAIN.  It turned out she had told me the wrong box to start with.  In the end, I got my key fitted in the right box and collected our mail.  It only took me just shy of two hours.  By the time we rolled into our driveway with the mail, Jack was bored, Gage was fussy, tired and hungry and I had a gargantuan headache.
Looking back, I met two nice yet incompetent postal workers today and one marginally competent one who was unnecessarily rude.  I wish I'd said something to the rude guy like,"Now that you've told me everything you can't do, how about telling what you CAN do?" or "Is your tone that rude all the time or is it just today?". But I didn't, because I never think of the good stuff to say at the time and because I hadn't set out to be witty or put anyone in their place.  I just wanted my goddamned mail.  Due to this experience and several others I've had lately with the postal service (lost mail, lost packages, etc) I will gladly pay more to use UPS or Fedex whenever possible.  In fact, if the private sector were allowed to deliver letters, I'd pay double to have mine delivered by UPS, Fedex, Lonestar Overnight or a damned camel - anything but the United States Postal Service.

Moving Out

So, after talking about it for over a year, we have finally decided to move to Steiner Ranch from our cozy little neighborhood in south Austin.  As much as we love this area and our house, Jason is getting sick of commuting an hour each way, and I'd like him home in time to help with the whole dinner, bath, bedtime routine.  That, in addition to a better school district for our children, finally got us motivated.  So, we contacted our realtor and started a long "to-do" list of things we've been meaning to do to the house for a long time.  Two weeks and a lot of elbow grease later, we were ready to list.  The house was sparkly clean and thoroughly de-cluttered, with nary a sagging gate or cracked light fixture to be seen.  Photos were taken, a sign went up in our yard, and we waited.  We worried we had listed too late in the season and would not be able to sell, but after eighteen days on the market we had an offer.  We are currently under contract with our house and have found a beautiful house in Steiner Ranch for which we are under negotiation.  Now we have to move...shit.
When I first began to think about moving, I was overwhelmed.  My brain raced with the process:  First fix the house up, then sell it, then find a new one.  How do we coordinate moving out and moving in?  Can we close on them both at the same time?  Will we need to stay with my parents in the interim?  What about a new preschool for Jack?  Will he adjust well to moving?  In order to keep from exploding, I forced myself to only think about one step at a time, so I started with, "Fix up the house," and moved on from there.  The downfall of this system is, now that we are actually to the part where we box stuff up and start taking in out of the house... well, I had kind of sort of forgotten about that part.  And, as we have started packing things and moving them to my parents' house for temporary storage, I'm realizing how much stuff we use on a regular basis.  There's a ton of stuff I can't pack until the last minute because we use it every day - the dishes, pots and pans, bottle warmer, kids' toys, clothes, towels, toiletries...But I can't pack it ALL at the last minute. 
And, of course, there's nothing like moving to make you realize how much you don't need - stuff you kept "just in case" that you're simply not willing to pack and move.  I had a cabinet full of nondescript cheap glass vases that I recycled instead of packing.  I am also in the process of giving away all the baby stuff Gage doesn't use anymore.  Some of it I feel some emotional attachment to, but not enough to pack and move it if I don't have to.  There are some fairly silly things I can't let go of, though, like all my files and posters I made when I taught school.  I may or may not go back to teaching some day, but regardless, I can't let it go. I worked so hard making, collecting and organizing it for years, and it was so valuable to me when I taught.   So, even if it's heavy and bulky and annoying, I'm takin' it.
I know most of my postings have a point or a moral or some sort of cohesive theme giving them merit.  This one is more of an inane rambling about selling the house and packing up all our crap, but since I feel more like a pack mule than a philosopher these days, I guess it's reflective of my life now.  we all need themes and cohesive endings though, so the point of this one is...
Moving sucks, but we do it anyway.

Feminism in a New Millenium

Right now, I'm reading a book that's a departure from my normal fiction/fantasy fare - The Girl I Left Behind, by Judith Nies.  The book is about Nies's life, both her personal and her political one as one of the few women working on Capitol Hill in the sixties as something other than a secretary.  While the book tells her personal story, it is also a vehicle to describe what the world was like in a time of great change and turmoil during a myriad of movements:  civil rights, anti-war and women's rights.  Reading this book makes me realize that I take a lot of things for granted.  The crap that women had to put up with as recently as the 1960's was absurd - separate entrances for ladies at various facilities that Nies visited during her political career, not being able to wear pants in public and having to endure what would today be considered gross sexual harassment in the workplace, not to mention being paid less than men for doing the same work and being categorically excluded from certain professions.  One of the points Nies makes periodically throughout the book is that the changes that took place during the sixties and seventies that allow women today to enjoy equal opportunities did not "just happen," as it often was portrayed in the media.  There were many women who fought long, hard uphill battles to achieve those changes.
So.... I feel a little guilty.  I feel like I have it easy.  I've always felt I could be whatever I wanted - a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a chef.  Not that I had a mind to be any of those things, but I knew I wouldn't be excluded from them for being a woman.  Women of the sixties and seventies fought political battles and even went to jail sometimes to liberate us from the mindset that women are only good at cooking, cleaning, child rearing and other house-wifey type things.  So what have I gone and become? - a stay-at-home mom.  I doubt the women's rights activists of yore would be impressed with my two-kids-and-a-minivan lifestyle.  I spend a lot of time doing laundry, cooking dinner, shuttling my three-year-old to preschool and feeding the baby.  All in all, my days are not generally that intellectually stimulating.  Maybe I should be off full-filling my potential.  I should be more politically involved (except I hate politics.)  I should be writing for a newspaper or magazine or something (except that I don't want to spend that kind of time away from my kids at this point.)  I should be....
Wait, hold on a minute, wasn't the heart of the women's rights movement about women having the same opportunities as men?  Wasn't it really about a woman's right to chose her own path and her right to be respected for her intellect?  When I take a closer look at my life, I realize that I am the quintessential liberated woman.  I am an updated version for 2011.  I chose to stay home with my kids because I wanted to.  I help my dad run our engineering business, and I have not once run into anyone who thought  a woman couldn't run a business.  I write a blog, because I know I'm a good writer.  I know I have some contemplative things to say, and I'm married to a man who supports that idea.  I don't feel defined by the housework I do or the dinner I cook.  This is good, because I don't actually do that much housework, and I'm a mediocre cook at best.  Yes, "Mom" defines a lot of my persona these days, and I'm okay with that.  It's a big job, and as a liberated woman, I am up to the task.  And, even though sometimes I have to remind myself that wife and mother are not all of who I am.  I am a writer, a runner, a business owner.  I have my own set of valuable skills I can contribute to society and they are only limited by my ability, not by someone else's view of my gender.
One thing I have learned over the past several years is, every person is deeper and more complex than they appear on the surface.  You cannot make assumptions about a person's character based on what they do for a living or some little snippet of their life you happen to witness.  Most of all, you can't make that assumption about yourself.  So even though on the surface, I may fit the stereotypical definition of a soccer mom, I am about as liberated as they come.  I know this because I have made choices without feeling limited, and I am truly happy in the path I have chosen.