Is This You?

A Simple Change of Address

I have always heard that if you move your stuff more than three times in your life, it is like having a fire. I don’t know if that is right as in my life I have moved twice. Last time I could do it in one fell swoop in the back of my Ford Pinto!  Now? It would take something along the lines of a barge to get my stuff from here to there. But. Yes, a giant movable “but.” I am changing my mailing address. Oh what a challenge.

I live rurally in a farming area that is ten miles from town where for the last 49 years I have received my mail at the town post office. There is no local mail delivery here so having a post office box number is the way mail is delivered. Unless you live out of town in one of the three zip codes in our county, then you can get mail via rural delivery. I have come to the decision to get my mail at my house, three times a week, on Rural Route HC 62!  The HC stands for highway contract, then you get a box number too. All delivered by our wonderful mail carrier Linda. All very grown up.  It was not on a whim that I made this decision. It has been thought of many times over the years.

For all those years I have driven ten miles in and ten miles back just to get the mail. Nearly every day. When I got married, we had a post office box because there was no rural route delivery. Now don’t quote me here, but I think the free rural route delivery in Diamond Valley must have started when the first road was paved in the valley sometime in the 1970’s. Did you get the part that the rural delivery is free? Well it is and moving my address to my house will save me over a hundred bucks a year in post office box rent! Those who know me well, know that I often squeak when I walk because I tend to be tight fisted with moolah. So this decision is going to be a good thing. Sooner or later. 

Later though apparently. I thought changing my address would be a snap. Oh what a tangled web… When was the last time you moved and had to change your address? Oh my stars. What a quagmire I have opened up. At first thought I only had maybe up to ten places to give notice to about this easy peasy address change. I mean I am getting up there on the age scale so I don’t have a ton of bills. The power company and my phone were really all I thought of. Who else would have need to know my new HC62 address. HA!

Have you ever started a project and knee deep into it you gave thought to jumping off a cliff? I am there. Oh, I am so there. The only thing that may be worse than just changing my mailing address, would be if I were actually moving and had to box, bag and roll up the tons of stuff I have and move it all.  At this rate I will definitely live here until they carry me out feet first. By the way, I’d like to take this time to apologize to whoever ends up having to get rid of all the stuff I have picked up and squirreled away in cupboards, closets, under beds and all other filled up nooks and crannies in this house over my active years of life! Sorry.

Back to doing the change of address. Paper work. It comes down to just paper work. Each part of one’s life has many fingers. Take my one credit card company. Yes, I only have one. “Ma’am, you want to change your address on your account,” the gal on the phone says? “Yes. Just the address, I am not really moving.” Crickets on the line. She couldn’t understand my P.O. Box was now going to be a HC62 Box. That’s after I had to spell my name three times until she found me in her computer. And I don’t like being called ma’am. I might actually be a ma’am, but you don’t have to rub it in.

Suffice to say this will take a while. I kept my box in town for business mail because someday I will be fully retired and not have any more businesses to deal with. Turns out keeping the box in town was a smart move. It’s going to take at least four full billing cycles to get the word out about my new HC Box number. Not to mention letting my Christmas card list know.

Moving. It’s not for sissies. 

Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers. Email her at [email protected]

Really!