So all week UPS has been delivering packages, multiple packages, to Credo from QVC. Thing is, neither Big Frog nor I have ordered things from QVC, possibly ever.
But Credo's former owners have. Often, evidently.
And we've been getting packages addressed to their current address, with stickers pasted over and around the ostensibly correct "ship to" addresses which redirect the packages our way.
But unlike the United States Postal Service, United Parcel Service won't let you just marker "please forward" onto the item and throw it back into the mailbox. Instead, I went online to figure out what to do, and the "chat now" person had me take photos of the packages, which she passed along to the local office, which sent a brown truck back our way to retrieve and redeliver. The drivers have been very gracious about it, but they seem as mystified as I about who would keep correcting a "ship to" midway through the process.
I am a night owl. This is not news to anyone who has ever met me.
And although we have our outdoor and tree lights set to "dusk + #h", they're on sometimes dusk to dawn, sometimes longer. It depends on how light hits the sensors. Or maybe we have a bad optic. We're not sure, and this is the first year we've relied on them instead of just using them as switches.
So I was awake and reading, and the lights were still illuminated and blinking merrily away in the darkness at 1am when a knock sounded at the door.
Even though I always say, "It's never too late to call, although it may be too early," few people call after 10p. And really no one calls after 11p, even if you tell them to. So a 1am knock was really unexpected. Haven't had one of those since college days, when everyone was on a semi-nocturnal schedule.
I open the door and I'm greeted by a complete stranger, an African-American woman whose face immediately falls and she says, "Oh, [former owner] moved." She starts backpedaling into an apologetic, "I knew they had their house on the market, I just forgot, I'm so sorry," and I learn that the previous owner's mother has passed on unexpectedly. This night visitor just an hour ago learned about the passing and hopped in her car to support her friend. Who no longer lives at my house.
But wait!
Longtime readers may recall how God providentially let us meet the previous owner and her mother the very day I moved to NC. In a show of completion, when I arrived in NC, I met Big Frog at the house rather than at the hotel where he was then living. Not 15 minutes later did the previous owner show up to do some last minute tidying before turning the keys over. So instead of prowling around the perimeter with cat-like tread and bobbing flashlights, we went into the house and took photos of us in our new kitchen. We exchanged cell numbers and invited the former owners to EOPS.
So, 1am notwithstanding, I was able to give the friend all the reasonably-current contact information I had for their friend.
Ain't God good?
Hebrews 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
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