Yet another challenge

My mailbox has never been exactly stable. It was based on a wooden stake pounded into the ground. I guess I should have known with our soils and our bugs, eventually that would fail.

While I didn't come HOME to this, it happened while I was pulling the mail out of the box.

So. I had a choice: practice piano and probably not get mail tomorrow (on the best of days, sometimes it's hard to get accurate mail delivery in this town) or go out to Lowe's, get a new one, and bail on piano practice.

Mail is important to me and I didn't want to risk missing a bill or something, so I went to Lowe's. Decided I was NOT going to do the "pound a post in the ground and wait for it to get eaten" thing so I bought a metal-post said that said you could set it with concrete.

But: I have never used concrete.

Lowe's has approximately 18 kinds of concrete/cement, most if it in 80 pound  sacks, which is....well, that's not QUITE half my weight, but it's close enough. 

I wound up having an ugly cry in the concrete aisle at Lowe's.

Eventually a sympathetic employee found me, told me there were 50 pound bags of Quickcrete outside, that was what I needed, he'd lift it into the back of my car and I could just sort of dump it into a pail to mix it. So I did that.

And yeah, I ugly-cried the whole way home. Why does this stuff keep happening to me? I am 100% out of "spoons" to deal with it, and yet I have to, because I don't even KNOW whom to call to hire to install a mailbox, and I'd probably have to wait at least a week, and....

I wound up using the whole thing of Quickcrete because I got a bit much water in it (he had suggested using half). On the upside? The hole I rage-dug trying to get the other piece of the wooden post out was a foot deep, 2" deeper than the requirement. And the metal post had prongs on the bottom so I could shove it in even deeper before pouring the concrete.

(I also didn't realize until too late that they wanted you to use gloves to protect yourself. Oh well. Probably I should have had a dust mask too.)

But I assembled the post (and put the bracket on) and shoved it in. The helpful guy told me "don't put the mailbox on until it's set up, it will be top heavy and might pull it over." I did that, though once I had shoved the prongs into the soil it was pretty darn stable.

So I poured the concrete in the hole (and it took all of it) and then decided to run to the Sonic for my grilled chicken sandwich and fries (and yes, darnit, I got a chocolate shake too).

After I ate....I went and looked at the post. Holy cow, the concrete had set and the thing was actually stable. (That indicates my level of trust in my ability to do such things). So I installed the mailbox, and even did it without dropping and losing any of the nuts or bolts:

Yeah, black might not have been my first choice but you can't get mailboxes in colors. At least not affordably and not from Lowe's. (I would have loved a green one that matches the trim on my house).

At least it will work now.

And I think I also deserve a special honorable mention because I did all this without getting ANY Quickcrete on myself (I was already in jeans and a t-shirt because it was a messier lab day)