I Dream of Rain, Sleet, and Dark of Night

I fear I'm stuck in regulatory Hell with my mailbox.

A couple years ago, in an amazingly display of innumeracy, my condo complex replaced our mailboxes with the wrong number. Really, in a row of mailboxes numbered consecutively, it made sense for my mailbox in the sequence to drop by one from the one next to me and then go up two as you go down the line. Close enough for quasi-government work!

Rather than complain, I printed out a correct number sized and colored to match, and taped it securely over the wrong last number. Problem solved, right? It cost me a little in ink and that was that.

Until today, when a Post Office employee while delivering mail apparently neatly sliced off my number revealing the original number beneath it. Well, I can't deliver the mail to Brian  at this mailbox! The number is two off!

So no mail for me today.

I called my condo people. I explained that while I tried to do the cheap route, it isn't working any more, apparently. I need a new mailbox with the right number already on it.

Well, the woman said, those are technically Post Office property so I'll have to find out what we can do.

Uh oh.

So we'll see. I taped another correct number over the original wrong number. Perhaps tomorrow I'll get mail. Maybe I can win a war of attrition against the number cutter. I live here, after all. I have no place to go.

I have a bad feeling the only mail I'll get will be addressed to Gloria D. Whoever she is and may she rot in Hades for the annoyance she's caused me over the years.

UPDATE: Hey! I repaired my address and mail was delivered. It's the small victories that keep you going, no?