that is better

So, yes, I ordered a couple more Ponies last week. Because it seems I need More Pone in my life. (That's one of the ways I try to distract myself from the discouragement that gnaws at the edges of my soul. And yes, when I look at it with a very cold, hard eye: I know that my heirs, whoever they may be (either my niece at this point, or perhaps the children of my cousins) are going to have an awful lot of stuff they won't know what to do with - I suspect once the current generations have died off (including mine), the generations that grew up with virtual everything will not be so motivated to collect anything: already I have read that the sort of vintage mid-century furniture (not antique but well made and real wood) and older are hard to sell, apparently millennials want a more-mobile lifestyle, or perhaps because many of them despair of ever owning a house, they don't invest in furniture....)

But I'm here now, and I hope to be here for at least 40 more years (maybe 50. I come from long-lived stock and barring some kind of individual accident or wholesale destruction, I suspect I'll be around a while). And I don't show any sign of outgrowing these. And anyway, they're cheaper than shoes and they don't make my bum hip hurt. So.

Two new ponies.

First, Toe Dancer. Yes, another ballerina. No, I don't know that I plan to collect all that were made (I know there is at least one more "adult" pony ballerina, maybe more). This is a baby pony, which as I've said ad nauseum are my favorites.

Yellow Pony (my favorite pony color) with purple hair, and the hair is good and thick, and has what I think what collectors call "factory curl" still in it (i.e., it has not been combed out).

These are just so silly and so cute. A real horse ballerina would be kind of a horrorshow (even though there are horses trained to do something like dancing, as a fancy type of dressage.)

And then the second one: Yo-yo, a newborn-sized pegasus. I didn't have a tiny baby pegasus before, so I'm extra happy about this one. She has the "fading" hair, but it's still pink, so I will have to be careful where I display her. (She also still has her comb and bottle; little accessories often lost):

You can see in that second photo how tiny she is.

And the reason I said this is "better"? At first, my package didn't show up. It was supposed to come today, there was no package on my porch or mailbox....I checked the tracking and said it had been delivered today. Went back and checked.

There was no good way on the USPS site to report it. I ALMOST e-mailed the seller a "what do I do now" message, but the USPS claimed they wouldn't investigate until a week's delay....and of course, a week from now I leave for Christmas.

And I stomped around a little and grumbled, muttering imprecations against lazy substitute USPS drivers ("My regular person, she knows me, she'd see my car and know I was home and bring it up" "Probably the person just marked it delivered but didn't because they're lazy"). Then I worried: what if it got misdelivered? Would the person put it back in the mail? Or, considering the fact that I've just come to assume lots of people are dishonest (low faith in humanity these days), what if they open it to see what it is, and then just chuck it, because it's of no value to them? (Or, keep it....)

So I felt bad. I thought, "Well, maybe it will show up tomorrow."

But then, after making my food for the CWF Christmas dinner tonight (Harvard beets - well, I like 'em, and they're a vegetable, and there's often a shortage of those), I heard a little noise at the door. "Oh glory be," I thought, "The delivery person came back."

Nope. It was someone - I don't know them, haven't seen them before, but a man and a young woman in a car, she had come up to the porch and was setting a box on it.

"OH!" I said "Did this get misdelivered to your place?"
She said yes, it had.

"Thank you for bringing it by! I appreciate it!" (And as I said on Twitter: Santa, they deserve an extra present this year).

So now I have my ponies and I guess there's at least one set of honest people in this world.