Because “sharp” is my middle name

Back in late April, I took advantage of Eco Store USA’s 2-for-1 sale (alas, that sale is over now) to restock my laundry soap; since I use the gray water from my laundry on my garden, I’m a bit fussy about what soap I use. (Go figure.) Their stuff works well on all but the kinds of stains I don’t think chlorine bleach applied with an orbital sander could get off and thus far the gray water has done no harm to anything I’ve watered with it.

Also I like the scent. It’s eucalyptus, and it does not last through the drying of the clothes. The house smells pleasant while the laundry is going, but I don’t then walk around smelling like I’ve been out hugging eucalyptus trees.

Because I like to keep some things kind of secret.

Hence the blog where I tell long stories about all the trees I’ve ever hugged and named “Clarence.” (It was an oak tree, and I don’t know why his name was Clarence or why I was so sure he was a he-oak. He just was. The same way that Homer the Odyssey is a he-van named Homer. It just kerchunked.) (The Civic’s name is Albert. Because the Civic we had before him was named Victoria.)

ANYWAY. The shipment was sent in two boxes. The first box hit the porch on May 4. The second box…didn’t.

And a few days later I thought, …waitasecond…didn’t I have a second box coming…?

FedEx said it was on time and in Sacramento. Hmm. Well, OK.

A week passed and my random brain suddenly spat out a reminder: …waitasecond…where’s my second box…?

And FedEx now told me that it was damaged and being handled “per shipper instructions.”

May 5: Package returned to shipper.

Oh. I see. Well, OK, then, I’ll check in a few days.

At which point, FedEx proudly told me it was “on time” and due to be delivered on May 18. Left Hagerstown MD on May 10, arrived Sacramento May 14, hmm. Four days to get only 70 miles? Really, FedEx? Well, I didn’t pay for expedited shipping so I guess this is the FedEx version of the slow boat to China. Whatever. May 18 it is.

And I get on with my life.

Until this afternoon, when my brain once against suffered a spasm of memory and poked at me with the waitasecond reminder that I was missing something.

So I went back to FedEx looking for answers and they said they had delivered it on the 20th and gotten a signature and everything, which they did not and I was all, “OH MAH EVER-LIVING DAWG! Some miserable filthy excuse for a rotten so-called human being stole my ecologically-friendly laundry soap!!!”

I spent a few minutes envisioning lively revenge I could take on such a person. Because you know how we ecologically-friendly product users, tree huggers and knitters are, all full of the violence and elaborate revenge schemes. And then? I’m going to write a FIRMLY WORDED letter sprinkled with adverbs to the editor…ha ha! That’ll fix HIS little red wagon, ha ha!

Then I started asking FedEx what the heck, man?!, by which I mean I began clicking randomly on things that looked like links hoping they would lead me to something more than “signed for by DBANNEN” – who by the way is not one of my neighbors.

CURSE YOU, DBANNEN, AND ALL YOUR EUCALYPTUS-SCENTED LAUNDRY SOAP STEALING ILK…!!!!

It took an embarrassing amount of time for me to notice that it was delivered Exton, PA.

Which would be roughly 2,800 miles from here.

Which would be where EcoStore is.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh…

What threw me (I think) (apart from apparently believing a package could get from Sacramento to Exton in less than 24 hours) (which I suppose is possible but not at the price I paid for shipping) (which was nothing because shipping is free for orders over $25) is that it went through Hagerstown twice. The first time, they apparently sent it right back to Sacramento, where they promptly went, “what the heck, man?!” and threw it back on a truck to Hagerstown, where they presumably went, “Ohhhhhhh, return to shipper, gotcha…” and tossed it on other truck, the one heading east-ish, that got it back to Exton where (presumably) someone (possibly named DBANNEN) at EcoStore received a box that was squished and/or leaking aromatic laundry soap all over the place and said (some variation on), “Well, darn.”

You know what upsets me about all this?

The fact that my brain is going to continue giving me random prods at the least convenient time possible until that blasted box actually gets back to my porch.

That is what it does, my brain. It doesn’t go, “Oh! You were going to call your grandma today!” at, say, 3:15 in the afternoon.

Oh, heck no. 3:15 in the morning, sure. It will wake me up at 3:15 in the morning to scream “HOLY CRAP, YOU WERE GOING TO CALL GRAN TODAY AND YOU DIDN’T!!!!!!”, with an urgency usually reserved for things like, “HOLY CRAP, I’D BETTER DEFUSE THAT BOMB BEFORE WE’RE ALL BLOWN TO KINGDOM COME!!!!!!!!”, thus ensuring that I will spend the next hour before the alarm goes off in a weird state of half-sleep (where the really bizarre dreams live) instead of actually asleep (where being rested for work lives) (but why take all the fun out of my work day by being rested? pfffft! being rested is for the weak…) (yeah…could I be weak now, please, thanks?).

And then it will forget all about it for the next twenty-four hours, only to bring it back up in the wee hours the next day. Or, it will bring it up while the Denizens are dangling off me yapping about dinner and permission slips and don’t forget to call Gran later and can they have sixteen friends over for dinner and also they forgot to tell me they need to bring 48 store-bought cookies to school tomorrow.

Sigh.

Oh well. Without people like me, Franklin-Covey would go out of business. There would be no need for smartphones or PDAs, either. Shoot, even pen and paper manufacturers would feel the pinch – not only do I need pens and pads to write my incessant lists, but I lose them like they were free.

Think of the billions of dollars that would be lost to the global economy if there weren’t people like me wandering around unable to remember what the heck it was they were just thinking about two seconds ago.

It would be horrible.

Which is why I…uh…wait…where was I going with this again…?