I filled out a Missing Mail entry after tracking showed a package sitting in a southern Californian distribution center for a week. It was too important to lose. The sender wanted so badly to connect and to put good into the world while her own was falling apart and I wanted to be able to exclaim over it to her.

The next morning USPS asked me for a description of the contents.

Mentally appealing to whoever might read it I wrote a picture of toddler blouses hand-embroidered on the front and sleeves in Ukraine by the sender, one with bright multicolor daisies, one with red roses for a little girl with Rose in her name.

It was delivered not to my mailbox but directly into my hands the next day.

It turns out, though, that you can’t send out a request like that if they’ve already scanned the item at your local post office and Informed Delivery has claimed it would be delivered that day–but then it didn’t show up. Their site says it can take up to a week and just wait, everything’s cool.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…

Everything is NOT cool. I almost went to the post office today to demand it but decided to wait till the mailman came, so of course he came too late for me to head over there.

Don’t tell us to wait a week for that ballot when the freaking election is next Tuesday.

The one relief in this is that the State itself shows it as not having been delivered. California does voting right.