cards on the table

I need a tube of lipstick.

Or so you would think from the love letters I have been writing about the Mexican mail service.  (let's play post office; mail lover)  But, like all relationships, this one is not perfect.

I have never had a problem with my correspondence.  Letters usually take a week or two to get to The States.

For some reason, magazines are another story.  My copies of National Geographic stopped arriving just over a year ago.  And then The American Spectator dried up.  For two years I have been without The Economist.

Telephone calls and email to customer service desks have elicited the appropriate level of concern.  But concern does not deliver magazines.

Whatever causes the magazines to cease their circulation does not stop other correspondence from the publishers, however.  In the past three months, I have received notes that obviously do not have this customer in mind.

Thank you for subscribing to our magazine.  It is time for renewal.  Just send us money.  And we will send you -- nothing.

I will renew my subscription to The Economist and The American Spectator -- because they publish the contents of their print version on their web sites.  I just need to become accustomed to reading them there.

Even though I may have given up hope of ever seeing another magazine in my postal box, I am still a big fan of the Mexican mail service.  And I proved that today by taking a stack of greeting cards and letters to the two usual guys behind the counter.

They chuckle when they see me come in with my monthly stack.  Apparently birthday and anniversary cards are not regular fare for them.  So, I went through each card -- letting them know about the friends that were receiving my greetings.  And why I was sending cards to Canada, Britain, and Germany, as well as The States.

I am going to be in Miami for the last week of August and the first week of September for a friend's birthday.  While I am there, I need to pick up a box of greeting cards for the coming year.  One thing Mexico lacks is a good supply of cards.  At least, the type of card I like to send.

Now, I will wait for my family and friends to bury me in stamped greetings.