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I’m one of the most trustworthy* people you will ever meet. Probably the most deceitful thing I have done this year was substituting ham for turkey in the kids’ lunches last week while still calling them ‘turkey sandwiches’.
So, I felt positively Gone Girl’esque yesterday as I drove to the next town over and got myself a super secret PO Box. Okay, so it’s not super secret since I’m telling you and the first thing I did was text my husband a picture of it telling him:
Why do I need a PO Box? Am I having a scandalous long-distance affair with someone from the 1850’s? Do I ……. okay, that’s about the only reason I can think of that I would need a PO Box.
No, I decided to get a PO Box because I have been really enjoying some other bloggers’ newsletters and thought it would be good job training and fun to do one for the Dusty Parachute. So I signed up for a MailChimp account and found a WordPress widget to put the sign up form on my site. Everything was going along smoothly until I saw a big ‘this field required’ error on the address field. I should have known, after managing email campaigns for many of my clients over the years, that email laws are pretty darn strict: by law, outgoing emails have to include an address. Now, I like y’all and everything, but I’m not sure I’m ready to share my home address with the world. I tried to figure out a work around for a couple days, but in the end, decided a PO Box was the way to go.
So I did a little searching at USPS.com. The first thing I noticed is that the word ‘PO Box’ has a TM mark on it, so hopefully I’m not going to get sued for a bazillion dollars for saying PO Box so many times in this post. (If I am, I’m going down in a blaze of glory: PO Box, PO Box, PO Box, PO Box, PO Box, PO Box!!).
The second thing I noticed is that just like in real estate, apparently with PO Boxes (TM), it’s all about location, location, location. As you can see, the Post Office that is conveniently located near my gym, Target, Costco, library, gas station, etc, has a waitlist for any box smaller than the size of my two cats…(hmmm…that gives me an idea….).
The next closest option, which is convenient to nothing, has plenty of availability and is cheaper to boot. Done and done.
I immediately came home and removed myself from every mailing list through the DMA website but I still have visions of showing up in a few weeks to some hefty fine for that insane phone-book sized Restoration Hardware catalog being jammed in this tiny 3×5 PO Box (TM).
So that’s my life now. A secret identity, with a PO Box in another city, which requires me to drive 7 miles to pick up piles of junk mail.
Please make this silliness worthwhile. Sign up for my newsletter. I’ll put some extra goodies there that aren’t on the blog and will only bother you with once a week at most.
And for the love of all that is holy, unless it’s piles of cash, (or unless you’re my 1850’s lover), never, ever mail anything to the address on said newsletter.
And if you hear any meowing coming from my PO Box (TM)…. you’re just imagining things….
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Make my PO Box in Manchaca worth while by signing up for my newsletter here.
*Spell-check is insisting that I should change “most trustworthy” to trustworthiest. But that sounds dumb, and as I type it out now spell-check is telling me that trustworthiest is not a word, so I’m going with my version….stupid spell-check.
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