I nearly turned around and walked out of the Stewart Station Post Office the other day when I saw how long the line was. But then I remembered I couldn’t pick up our commission check at the antique mall for another 15 minutes, so why not stick around?

One customer monopolized one clerk’s attention. He was a very pasty-complexioned twenty-something man dressed in baggy khaki shorts and a pseudo Hawaiian shirt, with two big boxes of smaller packages to send. Humph. One those eBay dealers, no doubt.

I took in the impatient 40-ish man, the young women who waited in line to try to find a lost package (she got a phone number to call, I think), and the well-dressed woman. None of them held my interest for more than a few moments. As I scooted up along that fine new innovation, the impossibly skinny P.O. counter / line wrap-around, I took a harder look at the pasty dude’s boxes. A couple of APO addresses [that’s what you call active duty military service addresses, right?] and one Canadian address. Then my eye drifted up to the return address: oh ho! I had no idea they did mail order business. The return address was for One Eyed Jacques, the local gaming store. Man, what is all that stuff? Small boxes, envelopes that could hold a comic book (which I didn’t think they sold), and medium boxes surrounded him.

Of course, you all know I am way too shy to have asked the fellow what sort of stuff they might send to service men (the only times I have been in, I was the only woman in the place, so I am going to take a guess with that overgeneralization) and Canadians. Whatever it is, I hope they take in enough money doing it to stay on Cary Street and keep Carytown from becoming too . . . Too.

Speaking of Too, Nordstrom wants me to know that its store at Short Pump Town Center opens September 4, and that I am pre-approved for a charge card. Sigh. Nordstrom is a very fine department store. The amazing red dress that I wore to S & D’s wedding last year came from the Pentagon City Nordstrom. I don’t need their credit card. I’m not going Half Way to Charlottesville on a regular basis. And yet, I can’t seem to throw away this handsome mailing they sent me.