Going Safari: Rhino and rabbit. And I'm 'mentally damaged' for the Postcard Project.

As I was preparing to go over to Cheryl’s for our “Safari” (????), I needed to have all the postcards ready to go by the time we went to the Ferry. So when my care person came, a new younger person, they saw the 30-40 postcards around the room airing from the stamping, and then when saw they cards they were blown away by these exotic postcards.

“Where do you get these postcards?” she asked.

I get them from all over the world, but Japan mostly. I explained waiting a month to get them.

“How much do you pay?”

“I try to keep the cost to a dollar a postcard on average, but with special ones I pay more, up to $3 for the maximum. But then there is the ink stamping,” I showed stamping, “And then the stickers which come from Europe, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and different places in North America.”

She was holding one or two of the cards and said, “Wow!" She turn to face me, "SO...how much do you charge for them?”

There was a pregnant pause. “Um, I don’t.”

She looked at me without understanding. “I don’t charge, people who want a postcard just write me and I send them postcards. It is my new, um….vocation”

She was still giving me the look you give to people who hold giant, “Jesus is coming with Hell in his Sandals” signs by the roadside. “And you do all this to them, doesn’t that take a long time?” I think she was starting to remember, "Client has seizures and has had a stroke" aka has MENTAL DAMAGE!

“About three days,” I tell her, “I try to average three hours a postcard.”

She shook her head and said she was heading out to do the dishes. Later I asked her if she could help me and she said yes. I needed help wrapping packages.

She helped me wrapping the 'surprise' packages (sometimes just little gifts, or notebooks like this) and asked, “So, you have a lot of friends.”

I said that yes I do, “but I’ve not actually met them.”

She gave me that ‘look’ again, and there was a “You’re sending these out and you don’t know these people?”

“Well, some of them send me postcards! And other stuff!” I stammered, “And besides, wouldn’t you want to get a gift? Just because?”

It turns out that Cheryl also has been getting issues at the post office because a couple postal workers ask, “Do you have a home business?” regarding the “surprises” she posts for me. She says, no, she just comes and posts out packages for her sister to her sister's friends every week. There is a loud “hurmph” to indicate the total disbelief. People in America do things for MONEY, or themselves, or both!

I am not sure what to think of a world where postal workers, care givers, customs agents, basically no one can understand why someone would send out ANYTHING to someone much less a postcard or a package, and keep doing it week after week for NOTHING? It’s UNAMERICAN!

The truth is, I was so desperate for stickers that I put up an appeal on a Japanese website and yesterday received a package with 20 anime postcards and about 15 sheets of anime stickers.

When they first said they had stickers I offered to pay and they said, no, just the postage. I asked how much to pay them through paypal for the postage. They said they changed their mind and instead it came today payment free. Free.

Yes, also in Friday alone I have had three people who tried or have cheated me out of money because I have to buy my stickers and such online. And many days, trying to get what you paid for seems a hopeless endeavor. But I like to think that the Postcard Project is fighting against the tide. Because a world where sending something to someone to make them happy is seen as stupid, strange or ‘not the way to make money’ is not a world I want to live in. So that is world I want to change.

I have been up and down today. I missed getting my package from Japan by minutes today due to a misunderstanding and closing of the post office for the holiday. The packages were posted anyway. So were the postcards! And though I had been pretty blue we DID go to a park, a Safari Park. And I GOT a great picture of Rhino with full tusks (SO THERE DAWN!). I will post them tomorrow when I get back to my high speed computer. I saw zebra and lions and tigers and wildebeest and gazelle and actually fed them. Though when a gazelle climbs towards your lap it is not as cute as this!But they are pretty cute (with the little horns, big horns sKARY!)

We did see these little baby rabbits who were tunneling UNDER the tigers cage to eat the grass. Then the tiger would wander over and all these baby rabbits: white, grey and black, would spill out of this burrow. The parents watched with a sort of “Oh, like I can stop them!” look. This certainly is a more extreme version of the Peter Rabbit story. “Now Peter, don’t go eating the grass inside the Tiger enclosure!!!” But that is where the grass was the sweetest and as soon as his mother was away Peter couldn’t help but…….

We had to stay in the vehicle but we were going crazy taking photos, much like this picture Linda took of us, when we were here several weeks ago (a month?) in the Hoh Rainforest. It isn’t we are oblivious to the rainforest, it is just we need to “capture” it. Yes, we ARE camera whores.

So on the bright side I saw the game safari. Then we came home and that started the really bad news. First, my right hand went entirely black in the fingers, and had to be soaked, then one finger in the left hand went black. Linda admitted she didn’t have any idea what to do but panic, while I suggested calling zombie films and saying I could cut down on the special effects as it really did look like a corpse hand from the grave.

Then hands sort of oddly purple/blue, got into bed but a wee to late, as I had (according to Cheryl) an absence seizure, into a tonic seizure, then a grand mal, and then a complex partial. Which is a complicated way of saying that I woke up later not having just been kicked by a horse but one of the dressage horses who then back over you, rear up on their hind legs and then demonstrate how they can stomp on you sideways and then back again.

I woke with purple fingers and again, for the second night in a row, got frostbite INSIDE a heated house. So, not exactly a boring time. We are all puzzled as fingers turning black in like 2 minutes, a whole hand, is something to be seen after SEVERAL days of exposure, not a few minutes being overly tired. Still, saw a Rhino! Ha. But I didn’t take the picture of the black Hand! Bummer! For some reason everyone including me was sort of running around or screaming (that was me!).

See you tomorrow, if Customs lets us suspicious types back into country (who knows, people who GIVE things away are probably capable of ANYTHING!). Oh yeah, hope the boat ride is smooth as I have a seizure every time it isn’t. Makes visiting Cheryl a bit of a sour aftertaste, literally (or burnt rubber aftertaste).