It's been almost 3 months now since my last entry.
I've been dabbing in Postal service throughout the summer. I mean not just an Assistant Rural Carrier, which only works on Sunday and Holiday. I also worked on weekdays, basically worked as a regular part time, like an RCA(Rural Carrier Assistant). The Middleton office needed quite a bit of help during summer time. There are people taking two week vocation, and other people sporadically taking days off as well. There are 4 routes with regular carriers, and 1 route without. And there's only 2 RCA between July and August. I did route 1 for quite a bit during that time. My trainer, Stephanie was really good at gauging how much I could do so I won't be overwhelmed. At the end, I could deliver about 75% of route 1 by myself. But casing the mail and sorting packages into delivery order was a whole different matter.
I used to work as UPS driver's assistant for seasonal job for 3 years. I always believed that I could work as a package deliverer. But mail is another matter. The volume itself is a significant increase. The sorting part is hard for me too. There're categories of letters, Flats, small parcels, and large parcels(packages), and weekly bulk mails(market basket weekly..etc). I still need about 4 hours to case all of them, might not include the pull down time(pull the letter, flats, and small parcels down from shelves into trays...). Then there's the packages. They don't print out packages list for us. The regular carriers are so used to the routes, they could simply just remember them. I can't do that, I need to first write them down, and then put tags in between mails to remind myself. As of this moment, I tried to just use the list. But the placement of package is a issue as well. How to quickly get to each package is still hard for me. I know the general location of each package but still need to finger through many of them to get to the right ones. As for casing the mail, I felt that I know enough to sort mails onto shelves. But after I finish casing the letters, it's usually 11:30! I should finish casing at around 930! That's 2 hour difference!
And for the last two weeks, my speed was shrank dramatically! I don't know it's due to fatigue, or my sickness. I've been sick for almost a month now. It started at the end of summer. I could feel it. When I was driving around, there's no people around me. That somehow unchecked me inside. I would feel intense emotion, usually sadness, anger, hatred, or jealousy. I kept thinking of her, not being able to be with her made me really sad, it's an gut wrench, everything just smashed into each other. I felt intense sadness. Then I would ask myself questions. My answers trigger rage, then it turned into hatred, and started to count all of my weakness. Then I would think of people that worthy of her. It went into a cycle, jealousy, rage, sadness. I would yell, even cry while driving.
But maybe it's not all bad. I mentioned those because, bad memories burned the biggest hole in our psychic? I like to sing, I like to see the dogs on routes. I just saw an adorable tiny chow chow last week! My gosh, he was adorable. There was another dog at 15 Norma, I really loved that dog. I knew he was independent the first time I saw him. He just followed my every move the first time, extremely alert. The second time I needed to get off the truck to deliver a package, he followed me and barked. He even tried to get behind me. He was a perfect guard dog. But when I talked to Donna, the regular on the route, she first apologized that she should remind me of that dog. She did not realize that I really liked the dog! :)
I am not sure how long I will be able to put up with this though. I do miss working with people. In the beginning, I told myself, if its easy, do it quickly and accurately. Like, "會計當而已矣". But after 3 months, I still could not get it done efficiently, the frustration started to brew.
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榕要回台灣了. 一開始是美芳告訴我的, 繼而胡熒阿姨也和我說了. Tom 的婚禮上, 榕也證實這一點. 之後, 榕的男友也總算來了美國一次. 我鼓起了勇氣跟其他人要照片, 但是, 其他人都沒有回應. 我又想用一本之前買的一本本子做記念冊. 我收集了一些照片, 拖了一段時光. 到最後
才來看怎麼把這本冊子裝訂完成...太晚了! 結果我只好急急的上 shutterfly 做了一本記念冊. 雖說照片收集, 和照片合成之前都做了一點. 但是畢竟太急, 東西來的時候, 差強人意... 大大差強人意. 重複的照片, 照片的大小, 文字的點綴.... 不談了. :p 另外, 現在我才知道榕是十月十四才要離開美國... 實在沒必要那麼趕...
這個星期五要去 Jo 家 party, 算是歡送. 我也被邀請, 每次感覺見到榕都感覺是最後一次. 這次大概是真的最後一次了. 不知道要怎麼謝謝 Jo...
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