So yesterday, I had a fun little diversion from the mundane!!!

Around 1:30 I got a call from Business Services (aka the mailroom) to say I have a package and they cannot find me.  It’s a big building, so I give them directions to my little cube.  About 3 hours later they find me.

It’s a big building, but 3 hours?  Really?

So finally around 4:30 the nice guy finds me, hands me a FedEx box and asks me to sign the tracker thing.  Sure!  fun!  A package!
I remark to the delivery dude, while giving it a good shake for emphasis, that for the size, it feels light.

We laugh politely, if not awkwardly.

He finally leaves and I tear it open, all excited to see what treasure has come my way unexpectedly!  I know you are wondering too, what did I find?

Nothing.

Yes, literally NOTHING was inside the box!

I looked around nervously, half expecting people to jump over cube walls, pointing and laughing… nope…

Just me, alone with awkward weirdness.

I poked my head in the box again, felt all the edges – maybe i am missing something?  Nope, it’s most definitely empty!

Finally, I looked at the label and it’s addressed to my company, first name, last initial and my department (not my whole name?  what?) and is from Overstock.com

I figured, eh, I have time, I can figure this out!  The only number I had to go on was the tracking number on the label.  I went to FedEx.com and entered the tracking number.  Simple, right?

Wrong!  I get ‘invalid number’ !!!

I look closer at the label and realize it’s a UPS label on a FedEx box!!

ARE YOU EVEN JOKING?!  This is more fun than Facebook any day!

Of course, all UPS tells me is that yes, in fact, the package was successfully delivered!  yay!

Ahem.  So um… still no idea what I was supposed to do with an empty box…

To Overstock.com it is!!  Their little web chat help application is fantastic.  I spoke with Ashley P and she was super helpful – not even any scritpy fake interaction either!

I explained the situation and she tried to look up the order with the ‘to’ information.

Guess what?  NADA!  I just hope I won that days ‘weirdest issue’ award for her.  She was at least able to pass on to the shipping folks that MAYBE they would want to keep UPS labels on UPS boxes and FedEx labels on  FedEx boxes… maybe.

Now all I can do is wait for someone to ask if I received their ‘special surprise’ to which I can respond “Well I got a box that fully entertained me for 2 days, is that what you sent?”
Hopefully they will follow-up with whatever was supposed to be in the box.  Or not, depending on what it was (what?  I’ve had my fun, I do not need a chia pet!)

Either empty boxes really are more entertaining than you remember as a kid or I am easily entertained.

You’re right, probably the latter.  (but remember, this is why you love me, I laugh at your jokes even when they aren’t that funny!)

Any excitement going on at your office this week?

UPDATE:  The mystery has been solved!  One of our other divisions had sent something for the holidays to my team via me – only someone at Overstock shipping put the shipping label on the wrong box!  They are great though and are resolving.  I did thank the team for the beautiful box of air and then shared with the team

No, we are not helicopter parents.  Maybe.  Ok not in this case.  This time, we were just both as excited to go visit the National Museum of Natural History as the kids were!  Of course, they have no idea what it is, but figure it’s something exciting.  I haven’t been there since I was a little kid myself.  Which is kinda sad considering I have lived around DC for the last oooh 10+ years.  (ok REALLY sad)

The museum is HUGE so we only did a few parts, mostly extinct creatures and bugs.  It is amazing how crowded this place is for a random Tuesday morning in August.  I cannot even imagine over the weekend.  I am not sure I want to find out, which is probably why I haven’t been there in a few (a lot of) years.  We did have a really nice picnic lunch outside under the shade trees – and the kids literally ran around and around and around and sometimes in a figure eight and sometimes chasing pigeons staying juuuuust out of reach.

The really fun part was riding the school bus with short seats and no leg room through AM rush hour traffic.  And then on the way home, add exhausted kids to that, the bus driver honking at crazy drivers (seriously, who cuts off a school bus in traffic?) and keeping your eyes open.  Once we got back, kids were crying and it was general chaos as they were supposed to have a nap and finish out the day.

My husband and I, however, had grand plans to head home to work on the house.  We have a list of about 25 items that need to be done before we can list the house for sale.  The plan was to tackle at least 2 or 3 of them before it was time to pick up the 4 year old.  Unfortunately, once we got home and had a nice long drink of water (did I mention it was 100 degrees that day?) we made the fatal mistake of sitting on the couch “for just a minute” and promptly fell asleep for an hour and a half.

Why YES!  It WAS refreshing!  And no, not so productive.  But there were boxes!  And packing material!  Which are still strewn about the dining and living room.  This weekend… oh this weekend there will be progress made!  And possibly before and after pictures as motivation to keep on going when I want to just give up.

I was reminded of this when we went to my mom’s for a little vacation.  When we were growing up, my sister, my best friend, and I would all sit around the table with my mom and talk and laugh and paint little ceramic or wood things.  Random things my mother would pick up on sale at craft stores (haha past tense, like she doesn’t still do this!  She SO does).  Once in a while we would *gasp* make our own plaster creatures using molds.  But the fun was more in the painting and chatting!!  Bonus – mom was up on allll the latest high school gossip!  (or bonus was we got to do crafts?  win/win either way!)

Honestly, I kind of forgot how much fun that was until we were at my mom’s last week.  8:30pm two days before we were set to leave and she breaks out the CUTEST little guys to paint.  I should have gotten a picture of the huge box of paints.  Let’s just say the 4 colors that comes with the set are not sufficient (and not enough paint!) to make cute critters!

AAhh ok guess which one my artist husband painted and which ones I painted?  I admit it, I was intimidated when he sat down to join us.  He has actual talent, not to mention training!

The best part?  It soooo doesn’t matter!  We had a great time just painting and chatting

(ok ok!  in the picture of the four, he painted the 3rd one and I painted the rest!  My mom was too chicken to send me a picture of the ones she did.  *ahem*)