I need some stamps, at least a whole book of them. I need them to pay bills, to send my grandmother a nice card, to send in my taxes. I need to be able to send something through the US Post Service at a moment’s notice. I need some stamps. Somehow, for some reason I cannot comprehend, I can’t manage to get any. This is causing some problems.
I don’t go to the post office for my stamps because there isn’t one very convenient to any of the places I go. Usually I just buy stamps at the store when I go grocery shopping. They have them right there at the counter and all you have to do is say, “I’d like some stamps, please,” and the person behind the counter gives you a booklet and you pay for it along with your soy milk and your Italian turkey sausages and your olives and your gummy bears and your sparkling water and your potatoes and your zucchini and that’s it. Stamps for you! Woo!
I must have been to the store at least three times in the last four days. I haven’t been able to get it together to cook one big meal during the weekend as I usually do, so I find myself running out for dinner provisions often. I haven’t been able to remember to get stamps on any of those trips, or indeed on any of the trips I’ve made in the past several weeks. Well, that’s not completely true. I remember in the car on the way there. I remember in the canned soup aisle and by the Parmesan cheese. Yesterday I actually chanted “Stamps, stamps, STAMPS!” as I was heading to the cash register, but then I got distracted by a magazine while I was waiting in line and didn’t hear the dude at the next counter tell me I could come over to him, and then my purchases totaled fourteen dollars exactly, you know, a round number at the grocery store, that never happens, and I thought that was pretty exciting and then I got distracted even more when the woman behind me dropped a huge glass bottle of milk and it got everywhere and then people were yelling for mops and I just sort of grabbed my bag and got out of there. I remembered about the stamps (“Stamps, stamps, STAMPS!”) about halfway home and then I yelled and screamed the rest of the way. And still didn’t have any stamps. Thus my taxes go unmailed, by phone bill goes unpaid, and my grandmother goes uncarded.
Apparently one can transact one’s stamp-related business online, and you’d think I’d be all over this. I’m not, though. It feels like giving in. Although I do like this and this. But it’s stamps, right? How hard can it be? I think this is the point in the entry when I’m supposed to say something along the lines of “ I have a MASTER’S DEGREE yet I can’t BUY STAMPS because I am SO QUIRKY like that,” but I’m not going to. I’m just going to ask you to commiserate. And I guess I’m going to have to just scribble “Stamps, stamps, STAMPS!” on my arm in Sharpie or something the next time I go to the grocery store. I’ll let you know how it works out. Maybe I’ll send you a letter.