haFor everyone in Salt Lake who is grateful for snow, rain, or anything other than sunshine, you aren't on my list of great people right now.

Jason, what the hell does that mean?

To say Thanksgiving newspapers are huge would be an understatement. These things are twice as big and contain four times as many ads as a traditional Sunday newspaper because of the day after sales.

At 5:30 a.m. I was scheduled to wake up to start on the monumental task of folding, putting together, and delivering some 80 newspapers. Because of the rain, I had to wake up 30 minutes earlier, far too short a period to account for bagging the papers. So 5:00 I'm awake, and I find out the main news section has not yet arrived thus leaving us nothing to do. As I'm crawling back into bed, my mom tells me I forgot to insert an unheard of fourth section of ads into the paper. I oblige while wondering why the hell we're short 30+ Olympic inserts while we have 30+ of the other three sections of ads.

Things get from bad to worse. At 7, thirty minutes before the papers are to be delivered, the news section still has not arrived, my sister is upset because we are supposed to drive half way down toward St. George to meet up with her boyfriend who she is going to spend Thanksgiving with. I don't know why my parents keep letting her go out of town with him. I'll be honest, I wouldn't trust her. It's not her, it's not him, but when we can't watch out for them, bad stuff can happen.

He has to work at noon. Because of this, the latest he can be home is 11:30. If everything had gone right today the earliest we could have been home was 7:30. This means we drive for two and a half hours to Fillmore and assuming we meet him right away, they have to make a two and a half hour trip in 90 minutes.

In other words, because of our late start, there is no way this can happen.

Finally at 8, three hours after they were supposed to arrive and an hour after I would have been done had they arrived on time, the main section gets to us. This means I could have woke up at 8 and it would have been just like waking up at 5.

How upset do you think I was?

My mom decides to help me while my sister assists my dad with the 31 papers on a different route. Because my mom is incredibly slow at folding and bagging the papers, we switch jobs, leaving her to slip the main section over the thick stack of ads and me to do the dirty work. Half way through, we run out of bags. It's now after 8:30, and we're beyond late.

We decide to leave the next 30-40 papers unbagged, but to carefully place them on the porch to avoid the wet spots. To further illustrate that anything that can go wrong actually will, we saw hail and heard thunder and the pitter-patter of hail on the roof as I was folding the last unbagged paper.

This means two things:

-We have to call and order bags, a task that'll no doubt take 30 minutes (even with him in the neighborhood) because the district manager took so long with the papers earlier.

-And I cannot start for another thirty minutes.

I carry the naked unbagged papers out to the car anyway and decide to bag them in the car once they arrive. The finally do, I bag them, and my dad pulls up, finished and ready to take my sister on her trip. The only problem is it's 9:00 and we can't even make it down there before 11:30, let alone have him turn around and make it home by that time. Still, she's determined to go.

Remember the scene from the first Back To The Future where Marty is set to head back to 1985 and the car won't start? It happened to me.

Everything that can go wrong, will.

First, the tire is flat and we can't pump it up because either the air compressor is broken or there's something wrong with my tire. Adding salt to the wound, my key gets stuck in the ignition and I can't get it out.

Plus, we're standing outside in a fairly heavy rainstorm with no coats or hats.

We load all of the papers into my dad's van, and deliver them. We finish at 9:50, with my sister *still* wanting to drive down for this Thanksgiving trip that they've apparently been planning for a while, but told no one about. The fact that she has the guts to ask to go on this trip after what happened this summer when she asked to stay out of town with him surprised me in a way.

Obviously I'm typing this, so I didn't go with them. There's something about riding in a dirty van with an upset family including a sister talking on the phone nearly non-stop, a father listening to news on the war and a mother who can back seat drive with the best of them.

I guess the best part came at 10:00 after a nice elderly man called saying that we had forgot to deliver a paper to them. (Come to think of it, I forgot two others in the same area, but all of the papers are in the car.) Due to the flat tire, I had to walk it down to them. From the distance, I could see someone waiting for me at the door. As I approached, I saw the wife rather than the husband. Everything in italics is what I thought. What I say of course, is in regular type.

Woman: (as if she's a rich woman talking sternly to a five year old) Hello, Jason. Why did you miss delivering to us?

Jason: Well, I have a flat, my dad drove, and I forgot to tell him to stop.

W: (still speaking like above but much slower) Well, this isn't the first time you've missed us. Why do you always miss us? You wouldn't want us to cancel our subscription now, would you?

Go right ahead. I didn't need the $2.50 your subscription puts into my pocket anyway.

J: (genuinely stunned though he's heard this before from other customers) No.

W: I always see her paper on the garbage can, (where she wants it placed)but our paper is always thrown anywhere.

That's because if you want your paper placed in a certain spot, you have to call and specify it. She did. Your neighbors all around you did. Thus, better service.

J: I'm sorry.

W: All right then.

At least you didn't bitch about being late. My guess is your husband was being "too easy on me" so you decided to "handle it." Your service sure will get worse, before it gets better.

To be honest, you'd be surprised at how much we get paid. Better than working somewhere else. I discussed jobs today. Everywhere has all ready done their Christmas hiring.

Sorry, I'm just moody today. My hair is wet, and so are my clothes.

Jason

Step aside Natalie, you'll return to be featured later today.

"Now the fuzzy stare from not being
there on a confusing morning weak

Impaired my tribal lunar-speak
And of course you can't become if you
only say what you would have done
So I missed a million miles of fun

I know it's up for me
If you steal my sunshine
Making sure I'm not in too deep
If you steal my sunshine"

Len, Steal My Sunshine

Man, it's 11:30 already?

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