Paper trail

New things in the 'hood are so exciting. Take, for example, our newspaper carrier.

Yeah. We're easily entertained in Bermtopia.

My first clue that something new was afoot in the wild and whacky world of paper carrying was actually the NON delivery of our Sunday paper two weeks ago. Sigh. After a delightful turn on the phone with the Spokesman-Review's refreshingly unnavigable automated customer service system, I set out on a walk with Ben.

Next door, on our neighbor's porch -- this would be the neighbors who haven't lived in their house for two years while they snowbird between Palm Dessert and a summer lake home -- was a Sunday paper.  Hmmmmmm.

I know, I know. I get the numbers 9-1-4 and 9-1-8 mixed up all the time.

Stumped and Sunday paper-less, my date and I did the only logical thing. We went out to breakfast and read the paper at Central Food. . . . along with a zillion cyclists who had just finished a midnight century ride.

There was so much lycra it was almost illegal.

The breakfast: Mushroom terrine

The view from Central Food: Sublime

Men in lycra: You get the picture.

Returning home and pulling into the driveway, we could see. The paper, which we already had read, was at last delivered.

Like this:

Artistic license? Paper carrier rage? You decide. All I know is I slept with one eye open that night -- worried about being garrotted in my sleep with a red rubber band from the Spokesman circulation department -- only to awake to this:

A perfectly deposited newspaper on our doormat. Norman Rockwell couldn't have teed it up any better.

And so it has gone since then, morning newspapers perfectly, symmetrically left on our welcome mat -- the first time this has happen since we began subscribing to the paper in 1987.

Huzzah! No more crawling under the car or bushwhacking into the daylilies to fetch the morning paper, I'm thinking. Until. . .

a morning a few days back when I flung open the door to greet the morn and grab the perfectly, symmetrically deposited . . . wait, there was no paper.

Because it was here. In my empty hanging basket on the front porch rail. I reached over and plucked it from its nest. Without. even. bending. down.

I rest my case. New things in the 'hood are SO exciting.