Good book? Check. Glass of wine? Check. Bubble bath. Check? Perfect.

So I got a hold of a few bottles of my bubble bath. Okay, more than a few. Like 10. Also know as the entire remaining stock of the stuff from the London Bathecary in Virginia. Alex was actually the one that found this place. Turns out he does read my blog posts from time to time, despite the fact that he vehemently denies it. True love? I think so.

But anyway, he sent me the link and I emailed to find out if they actually had any stock. When I didn’t hear back for a week, I gave a call down to Virginny and spoke with a lovely lady that let me know that they had ten bottles in stock — and that she’s pretty sure no one at the store actually knows how to check the info email address on the site, so it’s good that I called. I took them all and had them shipped to my house.

Now, this was my first mistake. In the excitement of actually finding the bubble bath, I managed to forget that anything mailed to our house via UPS or Fedex ends up in a black hole. For example, Will and Anne sent Alex his Fantasy Football trophy the week we moved in and checked to see if we got it once a week for a month. Eventually we got a UPS postcard saying that they couldn’t find our house. This in and of itself cracks me up, because if the postal service can find us to deliver the postcard, why can’t UPS? Well anyway, the trophy ended up back in Vegas about two months later because we weren’t able to locate it in the vortex of UPS mail hell before it was returned.

So of course on Monday, two days after I was supposed to have received my package, I got the postcard. It instructed me to call a phone number to either resend the package from it’s holding location with directions or send to another address. So I pulled out my cell and got ready to dial until I realized that the postcard looked like this.

Good thing that number’s readable. Called Alex to get the number since he’s had quite a few packages lost in the shuffle, so I figured he’d probably still have a postcard. He did. I called.

A guy at a desk in the Newark holding facility answered and asked for explicit directions to the house. So I asked him if I could just start with Route 1 South. He said he’s not familiar with this road. I ask if he’s in Delaware. Yes he is. For those of you who aren’t local, Delaware is tiny. There are basically two major North-South roads in New Castle County — I-95 and Route 1. To not know what Route 1 is is actually sort of mind-boggling. Mind you, it was built in the early 90s, so maybe it is sort of a “new” road. But 20 years is a long time to get familiar with a major roadway. So I try to explain, saying “the road that goes past the mall?” Nope. “The road you take to get to the Delaware beaches? Goes over the big yellow bridge?” “Oh, you mean Route 13?” Urgh.

At this point I just ask him to write down the directions as I say them and let the driver worry about it. Obviously this guy is living in 1991 or isn’t originally from the area. The good news is, it took them a solid week, but my package did manage to make it to my house. I squeed like Johnny the Homicidal Maniac when the email came through from UPS.
I actually got a little teary when I opened the box and saw the bottles nestled inside. I took them out and now they’re all lined up in neat little OCD rows under the guest bathroom sink.


So since then, I’ve been back to my usual rationing of capfuls of bubble bath. I’ve read at least four books since they’re arrival and if Alex can’t find me in the house, he’s gotten better at guessing where I’ve disappeared to.

Good book? Check. Glass of wine? Check. Bubble bath. Check? Perfect.