Slightly Off the Grid

When FedEx started including photos of delivered packages with notification of delivery, I think we all had high hopes that photos upon delivery would become standard and that delivery woes would be a thing of the past. (Forgive my optimism.)

Not living in the city or even suburbs, theft of my packages is not an issue. Out here in the country, there are different problems. First, did the driver find the house? And second, where did he put the package?

Recently, my sister-in-law ordered a new recliner for her ninety-eight year old mother who lives next door to us. The ten-ton chair arrived in three boxes—to our driveway. Why? Possibly because Google directions to my mother-in-law’s house routinely send the driver to the end of a cul-de-sac on the other side of the woods. From there it is literally over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house with no road. Directions to our house—next door—are better. Drivers are at least taken down our road but then are deposited a half-mile away with a cheery “you have reached your destination.” Sister-in-law often cautions deliverers to use our address for directions but the other house number for actual deliveries. I admit, for the drivers the struggle is real.

So the heavy boxes sat in our driveway for two days until a driver came back to deliver them to the right house and put the thing together. Ah, but the remote for the chair did not work. Without the remote, the chair won’t work. My twentieth century brain struggles with the concept of a chair that won’t work without a remote, but here we are.

A new remote gets ordered.

My sister-in-law (who lives an hour away) sends us the delivery notification.

Now, there are three logical locations to deliver this package: mother-in-law’s house, our house, or our side-by-side mailboxes about a quarter mile from our house where the county road ends and our gravel driveway begins. None of those locations include a white post.

How many white posts do you think are in the Hereford Zone of Baltimore County? Is this white post on this side of the woods, the other side of the woods, or on the other road in the Hereford Zone that has the same name as our lane? Or —not outside the realm of possibility— in some other completely random location?

Do you think my husband or I have any intention of scouring the area searching for white posts? The next day, as sister-in-law orders another remote, I stop by the mailbox.

There’s the remote in her mailbox, delivered by a white-post-mailbox neighbor.

The chair, however, remains unassembled in mother-in-law’s living room awaiting the return of a service tech to assemble it. Let’s hope he has the right directions and isn’t wandering lost on the other side of the woods. And if he sends a picture of his location, I hope he includes more context than the trunk of a tree.