You wouldn't think that a simple email about packing peanuts could leave a girl like me crumpled on the floor in a pile of snot and tears, but then, perhaps if you wouldn't think that, perhaps you're not me. Or living in my shoes at this particular moment.
Actually, even if you are a girl like me, you'd be quite taken aback by your own behavior upon finding yourself in that big fat heap on the floor with both dogs doing their best to lick away the tears and quiet the sobs and your head will spin with all kinds of thoughts as to why that email, that innocent email about packing peanuts, could possibly sweep the world right out from under your feet?
The email in question came from someone who doesn't even know me personally. She just knows that I collect packing peanuts. For my tea business. To ship the teas. She's supplied them to me in the past. Quite generously. She has left them on her porch for me in big black plastic garbage bags. I have come and gathered them and put them to use in my shipments.
Today she sent me a kind and gentle email to tell me there were three garbage bags of packing peanuts waiting for me. On her porch. In Santa Cruz.
I burst into sobs. Sobs! Crumpled to the floor. Leaned against the wall and just sat there and wondered at this life of mine? Of what it has become? And then I wondered, quite out loud, in between sobs, at the ridiculousness of tears over packing peanuts and that perhaps I'm only kidding myself when I say I'm doing so very well. Very well, indeed, until someone mentions garbage bags of packing peanuts on porch stoops in Santa Cruz.
