As if Farmer H pretty-sure trying to kill me isn't enough, now The Universe has joined this great Hillmomba pastime. Both seem to use psychological warfare to elicit heart palpitations, which might lead to something more permanent!
You may recall from my not-so-secret blog that we recently sold some property that we bought over 20 years ago, as an investment for Genius and The Pony. We originally hoped they would want to remain in this area, and divide it into 5-acre sections to use for building their own homes.
"You saps," chuckled The Universe as each graduated from college. "Your young 'uns have no intention of staying in Hillmomba for life."
Well, Universe, The Pony is still here. For now. But did not want land for building a house. So we sold those 10 acres. Since it was originally planned for the kids, I felt it only fair that they get the money. Getting it to The Pony was no problem, as we have the same bank, and transactions are easy. Genius, though, has no brick-and-mortar bank. It's completely online.
Genius himself did not want a wire transfer. Said there's no limit on the amount he can deposit by taking a picture of a check. And that's how he preferred to get his share. Of course we looked into the tax ramifications for US, including the parameters for "gifts" from one person to another, concerning amounts and limits for givers and receivers. Anyhoo... the plan was to simply mail Genius's share, in two separate installments, half being from me, and half from Farmer H.
Of course I was worried about the mail delivery. Genius just moved into his new house. The old apartment got my letters fairly regularly, with only a couple being returned to me, or taking over a month to reach Genius. That was a couple years ago. Genius has been getting mail at the new house. So he figured everything would be fine. There was going to be nothing special to attract attention to the envelope. Just tuck a check into the regular weekly letter.
Last Thursday, on my errand day, I had The Pony run that letter inside the main post office. I usually drop it in the blue box out back on the parking lot, the drive-thru mailbox, but I wanted to be sure it was safely inside, in official hands. The Pony thought that mail would be bundled up at the end of the day and sent out, whereas in the blue box outside, it would remain until pickup time at 11:30 the next morning, to go out with that day's mail.
I thought no more about it, just waiting to hear when Genius got it mid-week. BUT THEN I decided to read the local news out of St. Louis on Monday...
SWEET GUMMI MARY!!! How I regret THAT decision!
Two bags of mail were stolen from a St. Louis post office! Three people dressed in black, in a red Plymouth van, pulled up and stole two totes of mail! They're still looking for them! I had to follow the story to find more details. Our mail is trucked to St. Louis overnight. Then it gets sorted and sent out at various times to different sections of the country. What are the odds of Genius's letter being in those two stolen totes of mail? Slim, I'm sure. But that's not very reassuring when it's a REALLY big amount of money. WHY did this theft have to occur at this time???
I finally found more details. The theft was on Sept 11, around 4:30 p.m. Whew! That was a relief! Not for any bills that I might have had in the process of being sent, but for Genius's check. I had mailed it on Sept 11. Around 3:30. So no way could it have been in St. Louis in time to be stolen!
I was even more relieved when Genius sent me a text on Tuesday morning, saying his letter (and valuable contents) had been received.
No comments:
Post a Comment