It’s not often my house attacks me. No, wait, yes it is. But we’re a civilized pair and tend to keep things indoors and use Marquess of Queensbury rules. But the other day, I had to take it outside.

Okay, so…I’m going down to the mailbox at the corner of the driveway to send out a few things (among them my last car payment-yay! and the gift certificate I drew for on the Silver EXpressions blog a few days ago, so Peaches, if you’re reading this, your prize has a History, LOL!). Anyway, I have one of those mailboxes you see in standard suburbialand everywhere–mounted on a post sunk into the ground, a loaf-of-bread shape that opens via the front.

See, this thing is set close to the street, and close to the driveway. So between me and my occasional bright ideas of “let’s try to straighten out the mailbox post by hitting it with the car as I’m turning into the driveway!” and the mail carrier’s, “let’s see how close I can come and not hit–oops, oh well!” and we won’t even discuss the neighborhood teenagers who confuse my mailbox with their refrigerators and store the occasional egg in there, rather roughly (little bastards), my mailbox is pretty beat up.

I reach up to pull the tab, knowing I’m going to have to give it a bit of a jerk. For awhile it was too loose and I took a hammer to it to bend it back again, so the lid would stay shut. Then it was too tight. Then it started to rust. Etc, etc, etc, as Yul Brynner would say.

So I give this thing a yank and THE WHOLE MAILBOX COMES OFF IN MY HAND! Not just the mailbox, either. The post on which the crosspiece sets came OUT OF THE GROUND!

Immediately, I thought I’d suddenly become a Mutant with super-strength, and wondered if I’d already started to turn green. Mr. Xandra looked over and asked what the mailbox had ever done to me. I, of course, had to reply with a mighty, “Graagh! I smash you, puny human!”

Puny Human risked it anyway and came over to examine the sudden absence of pressure-treated lumber from the scraggly patch of lavender that valiantly attempts to screen the post that sees as much canine…communications exchange…as the box that sees the human sort. Turns out I didn’t suffer from a bizarre, mutating genetic accident, and wouldn’t be turning green and pumped in the future (damn!). The mailbox post, after being hit multiple times by cars, pissed on by every dog in the neighborhood, and maybe even a few of the gnarlier tomcats, and just generally aged in the semi-toxicity of suburban lawn chemicals, had just rotted away after 17 years of stoic, yet drunkenly listing, service.

So that led to a family trip to Home Depot, where a mailbox was located, and much agonizing was made over the shape and composite of said mailbox, and the careful selection of just the right size shiny numbers (which we really don’t need because we pay the high school sports boosters ten bucks every year to paint ‘em in big, reflective paint on the sidewalk, but try telling that to a four year old who’s just discovered metal stickers).

It also led Mr. Xandra to cast his lovely and beguiling wife (that’s me) out as bait for the Home Depot guys when the new post (She-Hulk’s new arch-nemesis in the future “Resurrection of Boxzilla” saga) was stored too high for him to reach (which required a Hi-Lo lift, because Mr. Xandra isn’t even short when he sits down). How this works is Mr. Xandra hides around the corner with the kids and the carts, and Xandra (friendly thing that I am) approaches the unsuspecting target identified by the orange apron. Once target is locked on, usually with a smile and some lash-fluttering, the hapless victim is led back to the aisle, and mid-engagement (after he’s gone to get the cherry-picker), Mr. Xandra and the Xandra-mites come out from their hiding place to accost the nice man with the big machine so that they can oooh and aaah at just how high it goes.

But beyond all this - the swath of destruction, the detour, and the subsequent return and installation of Boxilla 2 in the position of power to rule over its minions of lavender and dogsign - we all learned a valuable lesson at Casa de Xandra.

And that lesson is that every household really needs His ‘n’ Hers twenty-pound sledgehammers.

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