The Bottom Line: If you sent me correspondence, rejections, acceptances, contributor copies, or anything else at my PO Box address during the last month, chances are I have not received it!

To Speak of the Woe that is the US Postal Office…

I was feeling a bit paranoid since I hadn’t received any of the PO Box mail I was supposed to be getting, but it turns out it wasn’t paranoia – the nice folks from the Sandeen Prize e-mailed me to tell me 1. that my MS wasn’t taken and 2. that their notification sent to my (expensive) PO Box in Redmond was returned undeliverable and stamped “Temporarily Away.” Holy crap! Checks that freelance customers had sent (!!!), untold rejections, all for three weeks being returned to sender. When I called the post office they couldn’t explain it, demanded to see the returned envelopes (Which duh, I don’t have, my business and writing associates would have) and generally were no help. I am writing to the Post Master about this! I could have bitten a Christmas tree in half this morning. If only more poetry book contests and open submissions took e-mail! Then I wouldn’t have these horrible headaches dealing with the terrible post office. Of course, I sent all my Christmas presents back to Ohio via UPS.

And I’m still sick. And obviously, no poetry news in the last three weeks, and I have to track down rejections from possible places that even might have sent me rejections…And the windy, blustery cold weather hasn’t really let up since I moved here. I tried to walk yesterday in the park by the ocean but the wind blew me down, and then I felt much sicker afterwards.

But, on the positive side, driving out to get soup from the coffee shop yesterday, a pair of white-headed sea eagles (commonly known as bald eagles, a terrible name) rode the wind motionless about fifteen feet above my car. I nearly wrecked trying to get a better look on them. They are really much more beautiful than you would think from their depiction on American money.