the usps hates hanukkah

you may or may not know that the holidays are a very important time for me. why you ask? because there is one very special day in december when several hundred people dressed as santa claus form a flash mob in new york city and spend about 12 hours bar hopping and causing chaos. oh santacon, how i love thee.

as a cultural jew, i'm sure you can imagine that i have scruples with dressing up as santa (or dressing up as a "slutty santa" as many of my female peers do) so instead i have invented my own fab character ... the hanukkah fairy. my costume consists of a blue fairy costume that i have adorned with dredyls and jewish stars and all sorts of decorations. every year i try to improve upon this costume, adding a blue wig, a wand, etc. often i will hand out hanukkah stickers or chocolate gelt to children i meet on the street. i am SO much cooler than santa.

now, as you can see from the picture here, this costume is a bit slinky and does not provide the warmth that a santa suit does. luckily the last time i participated in santacon it was unseasonably warm. i doubt i will be that lucky again. so i decided this year i would add a nice cropped white faux fur jacket. and i figured i would decorate the jacket with a huge felt menorah on the back and maybe a dreydl on the front. i was thinking letterman jacket style, but made sassy for jews. anyhoo, i found a jacket on ebay and purchased it. i have been waiting oh-so-patiently for it to arrive at the library (i no longer have packages sent to my house since my last post office incident)

but then it never came and when i inquired where it was i learned that the seller had sent it to my home instead of my listed shipping address ... so again we delve into the horrors of the frightfully inefficient williamsburg post office.

1. i call the 800 number and they say they are unclear where the package is ... it is "out for delivery" since 2 days ago, but there is no sign that a delivery attempt has been made. sure, i can see why it would take 2 days to drive the package from the post office to my house. i mean, it is like 10 blocks away. a complaint was filed since apparently, this is contradictory to several different protocols.
2. i was given the direct number to my post office to call and see if i could arrange to pick up said package. (this will involve me missing work to go to the post office since they have shitty hours)
3. i called twice and got no answer. not an answering machine or a busy signal. just no answer.
4. i called a third time and i spoke to someone who immediately put me on hold. after being on hold for 15 minutes i hung up.
5. i called again, a fourth time! and again was immediately put on hold without so much as giving someone my tracking number. this time i waited 20 minutes before i gave up.
6. i called a third time and was quite bitchy and finally i got someone to agree to look for my package. of course, she wouldn't look for it right then. she said she would look for it and then call me if they didn't find it. then i stated that i wanted to come in and pick it up, but i'm not going to miss work just to go there and have them tell me that they don't know where it is. (this happened several times during the post office blues fiasco). so then she agreed to call me either way, if she found it or didn't find it. likely story. i will not be holding my breath for this phone call.

so sadly, the future of the hanukkah fairy hangs in the balance. will i be able to get my coat and not freeze my ass of? only time and incompetant postal workers will tell. if anyone has any suggestions where i can get a cute but inexpensive bolero type shrug faux fur coat please let me know.