counting items in the express line

For three days, I have been motoring around Barra de Navidad, San Patricio Melaque, and Cihuatlán taking care of tasks -- as Garrison Keillor used to say, getting up and doing what needs to be done.

I told you about paying for my postal box rental for the year. But I did not tell you that I had wandered out the door with a fistful of treasures, just as I had predicted while my family was preparing to celebrate omnisolemnis (getting carded).

If you are the type of person who gets impatient because the only person in front of you in the Safeway express line has 16 instead of the 15 allowed items, Mexico will be a place where you spend more time fuming than enjoying. And the Mexican postal service will not be a pleasant experience for you.

For me, the postal service is a perfect match for my newly-discovered content personality. I do not receive any time-sensitive mail in the box. All of my bills arrive either digitally or are slipped under my front door. 

My postal box is reserved for the occasional magazine from the Oregon Stare Bar, fund-raising letters from my law school, and, most importantly, greeting cards. Tuesday's catch was a mix:

• a book, A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land, by P.J. O'Rourke, one of my favorite writers
• a Christmas gift calendar from a law school friend, Howard Nobunaga, who lives in Hawaii
• a Christmas card from my cousin Marsha Van Orsow in Oregon
• a birthday card from my friends dating back to grade school, Steph and Jim Hunt in Oregon
• a Christmas and new year card from Cain Maccionath in Washington

Plenty of people sent me Christmas and birthday greeting by email and on Facebook. As I have said before, though, there is something special about the personalized touch.

The customized greeting. The physicality of nib meeting linen paper. The ability to hold the same object that was once in the hands of my correspondents. There may even be a certain sense of the inevitable that all of this will one day disappear, but I can still hang on to the vestiges of a kinder and gentler era.

There is a good chance that greeting cards for my birthday (and even Christmas) will continue to trickle in for the next couple of months. And that is fine with me. It is always a pleasure to be remembered despite the time of year.  After all, having given into the siren call of omnisolemnis, I would be just a bit churlish if I now turned into that item-counter in the express line.

To quote P.J. O'Rourke: "It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money."