Paper Delivery

For the past couple of months I added a new job task to the list: paper delivery. Every Thursday morning, I drive over to the Post Office, load up the trunk of my car with clear plastic mail bins full of Daily Post weekly editions, and set off all over town filling up paper racks. 

Sounds like an innocuous, routine job but I am telling you it can be a real adventure. 

 Each rack has its own requirements that need to met before moving on to the next one. For instance, always leave a ton of copies at the rack in the hospital and exercise a little finesse to get the door closed on the bin outside of McDonald's. 

Sometimes the elements like to throw in some obstacles. I've chased after news pages being bounced around in the wind like tumbleweed. Other times there have been unexpected encounters. I found a banana peel in one newspaper bin and may or may not have ended a wild animal's life while driving down the main hill road to fill up the racks in White Rock. 

If I am lucky, I will rope someone into taking this whirlwind tour of Los Alamos with me. My oldest nephew has joined me several times. The last time, he got the honors of being the DJ in the car. We listened to a lot of My Chemical Romance. I would glance over at him as we drove between stops to see him enthusiastically head banging to the music. 

Connor is an excellent co-paper deliverer. He puts thought into the process-even diligently counting the number of papers put in bins and then mentally recording how many are left the following week. 

It always feels good to pull up at his house and see him immediately throw open the front door to hustle out and begin our work.

But Connor is at camp right now so my loyal co-hort is out of commission. Last week my mother went with me but she too is now out of town. As a result I did the latest paper run solo. It was fine but  I found myself thinking again and again that next week Connor will be home and we do this great adventure together.