Thank you @bluebird for the lovely happy mail - the scratch and sniff stickers took my straight back to childhood 
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I took the international cards to the post office yesterday. I get them weighed just incase but the woman at the counter remarked what effort I put into the envelops so I informed her its just happy mail. She thought that was great and while my card was processing for payment she’s like let me apply the stamps for you and smacked them on and was semi yelling BE HAPPY! BE HAPPY!
My local post office is a hoot everyone actually likes going there! But those of you getting international mail from me, your letter got some extra happiness thrust upon it!
@Reinikka those post boxes are common here in trailer parks and at the entrance to large apartment complexes but not really anywhere else. But, my sons community in CO that is what they have as well the mail isn’t delivered to the house its a communal set up like that.
This house we have a mail box at the street by the driveway for our home, last house there was a slot in the front door which was really convenient they just shoved your mail right into your house!
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I think it’s very fascinating to see how mail works everywhere around the world! Here people have a slot in the front door, unless you live somewhere with a very long driveway. I think if your door is more than 10 meters away from the street you have to get a mailbox. But in the Netherlands, homes are small and most people live in terraced neighbourhoods, so having a long driveway is not the norm. The postman or woman doesn’t pick up mail, we have to take it to a post box or the post office. Our mail is delivered on bike so if they took everyone’s mail with them the bike would be so heavy they wouldn’t be able to move! I delivered mail as a summer job when I was teenager. One of my streets was the most expensive street in the area, so it was a lot of cycling for only a few addresses, lots of driveways and big properties.
I’ve never seen anything like those freestanding mailboxes! Don’t they get vandalized, broken into or have fireworks thrown into them by dumb teenagers in the same way they blow up garbage cans? I know that’s what would happen in here. In apartment buildings we have a similar system but they are usually built into the wall on the outside or in the entrance hall, so it’s harder to break into them.
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I used to live in a small town out in the country and we had mailboxes on the street. Sometimes teenagers would drive by with baseball bats and take out mailboxes.
The blue boxes sometimes get tagged with graffiti, but I don’t really remember hearing much about real damage. People might drop trash in there or dog poop, but if memory serves me they are usually placed with a public trash can nearby. Tampering with mail in the US is a federal crime with up to 3 years in federal prison (and a $250,000 fine, I looked it up.) So probably a better idea to blow up a trash can here. 
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It is a serious crime to mess with the mail in the USA…they even have their own investigators that look into everything from mail fraud to mailbox theft. People are very protective of our mail, which is why we had such a big deal when the boxes were being removed and machines dismantled. It should be easy for people to get mail out and in no matter where they live…and feel confident about the service.
There are places in the USA where mail is still delivered to a local grocery store or even by horseback…no matter where you live, there is a way to get mail, even with general delivery services.
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Wow, by horseback, it’s pretty cool that’s still happening! I’m sure tampering with mail is illegal in here, too, but I think the chance of getting caught is basically 0. In the best case scenario there’s some grainy CCTV footage of a few kids in black hoodies running away. The police are busy enough with robberies and murder and those kind of things to care much about teenagers blowing stuff up. We certainly don’t have special investigators dedicated to mail-related crime!
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Since moving to PEI and being in the country, our mailbox is by the road, unlocked and accessible to whoever wants to look inside. Packages are supposed to be delivered to our door or we get a card and have to pick it up at the post office. There is a flag on our mailbox but it’s used to indicate that we have mail. If we want to mail something, I take it to the post office and drop it in a collection box outside the building. Before we moved, we had a super box, similar to what @Reinikka posted and could mail letters in that. I don’t remember ever seeing a collection box except beside the post office anywhere I’ve lived in Canada.
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In the UK most houses have letterboxes, but we have had to install a postbox at the top of the drive. Our dog really doesn’t like the postman and it got to the point that the Royal Mail threatened to stop delivering post altogether 
Having a postbox at the top of the drive means that she has no awareness of him ever being there…unless they have to deliver a parcel! They usually get left on top of the dustbin now!
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Yeah we don’t have CTV in most of the country nor does the USA have those dedicated to postal box related crimes LOL Its normally though they’re in public places and people catch you and turn you in to the police.
A friend of mines mom was a very very sweet and lovely woman who would never hurt a fly! She was super religious, always very polite and welcoming. She was also very much a rule follower and lived with so much guilt if she ever even thought of going against her parents, spouse or goodness a law!
Fast forward chatting with my friend who off handed mentioned her mother went and voted and the whole family called her out on breaking the law for casting her vote. The very lovely mother was so upset how could SHE have broken the law? The kids were like because you have a felony mom!!! I was like WHAT??? Your mother has a FELONY??? Basically for a federal charge such as this your right to vote can be stripped and hers was. She was in her early 70’s at the time and her felony was from when she was 18 and a week from graduating high school her and friends went for a ride. During the ride they were goofing around and the driver swerved and hit a mailbox. They stopped and went to the house and let the owner know who was so upset and put out by this they called the police on the kids and they were all charged with tampering with the federal mail, fined, charged with a felony and stripped of their rights to a passport and voting.
Somehow her mother wasn’t really clear on this and had started voting and never got stopped for doing so (yeah we have difficulty actually enforcing certain things in the USA)
BUT its oddly enough one of those big no no’s in the USA that most people just don’t mess with
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So funny you post this with ‘unbeautiful’
I dropped a couple envelopes into a local one today and was going to take a photo to post saying ‘look how cute ours are’ but I didn’t have my phone to snap a shot. Mind you, the one I saw was pristine.
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Most planning done, final supply showed up today!
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Just the other day I was wishing I had a letter opener!
I may look for one online~
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Oh, gosh, I use a letter opener every day at work & though I have a nice one at home, what do I reach for? A kitchen knife, every time. Lol.
@Cindy I’ve disliked those busy mailboxes ever since they first debuted. Maybe the design was intended to camouflage the inevitable graffiti, which it does, but I think it looks just as bad.
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So cute about the clerk adding more “happy” to the mail!
I had a very odd experience today trying to mail my internat cards…
I am out of town, so went to a PO that is not my local one (I have been there in the past & they aren’t always the friendliest, so I braced myself)…well, I asked about the internat stamps that I remember using awhile back & she said they didn’t have any, so basically her demeanor let me know == case closed, I couldn’t mail my cards there.
I asked if she could just print the right amt of postage for them, but no dice. Of course I got flustered & didn’t even think of what y’all had told me here, that I could just buy reg stamps for the amt I needed & drop them in the box…she suggested I go to the PostNet place,so off I trooped.
Of course when I got there & they looked up mailing internat cards in their system, it was at least double the price, but at least they are now on their way!
LOL
So now I am going to order some of those Forever Internat. stamps to avoid this in the future!
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lol small post offices often know nothing of international mail…I had to tell the clerk in one I stopped by to mail something a few years ago how much to sell me…she also did not want to print it…
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Someone should inform them of the second chance laws…most states have them now as long as she kept clean for at least ten years…it is ridiculous that people’s right to vote would be hampered by something they did years ago and have paid for in time or money. It is basically saying our criminal justice system does not work if we say people don’t change…there is no hope nor purpose. With her clean record, she can easily get her record expunged, but yeah, the point is, doing something foolish can have long term consequences!
Don’t mess with the mail! lol
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Well she passed away a bit ago now. its just a funny story now that we tell about her because if you met her and then found out she had a felony you’d fall off your chair!
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awww…at least she made an impression on some lives with her “shady” past…lol…it is funny how the quiet ones always seem to have the best stories! lol
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