Mail scares me.

Seriously, mail scares me. For some reason, through my entire life, mail has gotten lost coming to me or going from me. You know those people who always say “but it must be lost in the mail,” and you think they’re total losers giving lame excuses? Yeah, that’s me. Only, it’s true. My mail is always getting lost. I even had mail in a mail truck that caught on fire after an accident many years ago – I didn’t realize it until I was getting creditor phone calls from the two checks that didn’t make it to their destinations (in their defense, I had waited until the calls were about to come anyway to make the payments, but still).

So today, I did my taxes online. I love doing that. Unfortunately, last year, we didn’t have the money to pay our taxes, and the babies’ social security numbers were taking their sweet time getting to us, so I filed for an extension and didn’t pay. That has to be rectified… and it will be – especially now that I know that this year’s refund will cover last year’s amount owed. In fact, I’m putting a call into TurboTax tomorrow to verify which version we’ll need for the Husband’s occupation in 2005. I did the taxes myself, but I’m not confident in them, and I’d much rather have verification that I’m doing them right rather than have even more penalties down the road.

Anyway, so because we didn’t file last year, I didn’t have some number off of the return, which means we couldn’t sign it electronically. And for anyone who’s done e-file, you know that when that happens, you have to print off a signature page and mail it. So I carefully printed. I double and triple checked the address and our return address. I even asked my husband if I was putting the stamp in the right place.

Because you see, mail scares me so much, that I don’t ever send it. My husband loves mail, still corresponds via snail mail with a number of people, and all that good stuff. So I leave mail to him. I do bills, but I do them electronically.

So, I carefully placed the stamp, then had a bit of an anxiety attack as to how it should be mailed. Does mail run on Good Friday? If I put it in the mailbox in front of the house will it get picked up? Should I drive down to the local post office and put it in their box? What if some brat in the neighborhood steals my mail, especially since I so OCD’ly checked and rechecked that the red flag was up?

Red Flag! Red Flag! Doesn’t this bother anyone else? I mean, there’s a sign of danger on the mailbox itself! Shouldn’t that tell you something?!?!

Okay. I’ve taken deep breaths. I’ve had a celebratory glass of chocolate milk. And I think my husband is ready to get some rest.

If I can sleep, worried desperately about the poor little letter that has to be mailed to the IRS within one business day of my filing.