Drive-thru Convenience

I've had a cold since last Thursday and haven't been feeling well at all. This morning I was feeling somewhat better, so I decided to go to the Post Office to mail a letter and get the oil changed in my truck. The Post Office has a drive-thru lane for mailing letters. There are three mail boxes in a row on the side of the lane with extensions that sort of "reach" out to your car window. While driving there, I realized that I wasn't feeling as well as I thought, but I was already on the way, so I kept going. I pulled into the lane and rolled up to the box. Another car had come into the lane behind me and was waiting.

I reached up to put my letter in the extension, and it fell back toward me. Only, I didn't catch it, and it fell to the ground. I opened my truck door, and tried to reach it, but I couldn't. I unfastened my seat belt and leaned over a little further. Still not enough. I then had to lie down on the seat of the truck and extend my arm as far as I could to reach the letter. Not enough. I then sort of leaned down while lying in the seat and almost fell out of the truck. In fact I would have except the mail box extension wouldn't let my door open up any more. I strained and squeezed and finally reached the letter. I got it and sat back up with great difficulty. It was then that I noticed that I had kicked over my cup of coffee, and it had emptied out onto the floorboard of my truck. I cursed loudly, and more than once. I put the letter in the box, buckled my seat belt, accidentally honked the horn, and pulled away. I looked into my rear view mirror to see if the people behind me were laughing, and they seemed not to even have noticed. I'm sure they were just trying to hold it in until I pulled away. God bless them.

The place for changing the oil is across the street from the Post Office. I pulled in there feeling really exhausted. The guy came up and I told him what I wanted. I went inside to wait and he got in the truck to pull it into the bay. I remember that there was coffee all over the floorboard of the truck, but I just didn' have the energy to even say anything to him. God bless him, he didn't say anything about it either. It wasn't until later on my way home that I remembered the towel under my seat that I could wipe up the coffee with.

When I bought our Christmas tree this year, I had to cut some of the lower branches off to get it into the stand. I put a couple of those branches in the floor of my truck to try to get some nice Christmasy scent in there. Well, I hadn't taken them out yet, so the coffee went all over a couple of Douglas fir branches in the floor with assorted scrap paper and fir needles. It looks like a real mess. It did anyway, but with the coffee it sure does now. Even after spilled coffee, Douglas fir branches, and trash in the floorboard the guys at the oil change place didn't mention it. They must be used to it.