love, really really: on the home stretch!

6 weeks, 180 invitations, and 2 post offices later... we are finally on the home stretch!!! this morning, my mother and i went to the lovely la mirada post office and that visit was a flop. when i handed the lady one of my boxed invitations, she weighed it again and told me the postage would be about $3! ummm, no. i already checked how much postage would be at the pasadena post office last week and was quoted $1.64, exactly 4 $0.41-cent stamps. and then she proceeds to tell me, it's because it wouldn't fit in the official slot on a card that she produced from underneath the counter. "see, it has to fit here," she says, as she pretends to shove my 1-inch high box inside the quarter-inch wide slot. and i just smiled sweetly and told her, it's okay, i'll just take it to another post office. somehow, i half expected the failure anyway.

so off i went to the pasadena post office near my work. i love that post office because it's in an old building and the fixtures look like the old post offices with wrought iron gates and that old architecture. and i love them even more because they're always very courteous and nice there. very un-postal service-like. so i got up to the window with my big box of 60-some little boxes, and i asked the lady to double check my postage. i held my breath as she says, "$1.64". whew! and i asked about the hand-cancelling of the postage and she said that they don't do that there. but they'll have to be hand cancelled anyway because they're boxes. they won't fit through the machine. score!!! i had her double check the boxes that were going to canada and the philippines. the one for canada actually cost less than the ones staying in the u.s., but the ones for the philippines were short from what the 1st post office told us. so i just added a few more stamps to the invites for the philippines and handed them to the lady. and off i went to work, with a much lighter load, both physically and emotionally.