Irony is not dead...

As practically no one who reads this blog will know, I recently returned from a lovely trip to the UK and Ireland. One of the places we visited was the Blarney Woollen Mill in Dublin. If you visit http://www.blarney.com and click on the "Customer Comments" link, you'll see photos of Bill and Hilary Clinton shopping in said store. Bill, incidentallly, is in the women's section.

At the Blarney Woollen Mill, they sell lots of jewellry, including charms for bracelets. My mother is a charm bracelet kind o' gal, but they were all sold out of the charm she wanted when we were there. So, good daughter that I am, I thought I'd go online and order the charm for her as a surprise. The other part of this story is that I, too, saw something I wanted at the Blarney Woollen Mill. Here's a hint: it was woollen. Well, THEY were woollen. I saw a couple of sweaters that I absolutely loved but didn't have room for in my luggage. And we'd already been accused of carrying dead bodies in our luggage by a mannerless taxi driver in Belfast. So, while online, I thought I'd throw a few more things in the basket in addition to the charm. Though the charm, of course, was always the most important item in the basket. I ordered the Trinity Knot charm, which matches earrings my Mom bought on the trip.

The bill came to just over $300. Fair enough. When I got home from work yesterday, in a gross, sweaty, heat wave state, I found a note in my mail saying the package had arrived. Yippee! And ahead of schedule too! It was then that I noticed the fee to pick up the parcel - the fee for duties and taxes - $137.93! Holy sheep! That's a lot of money for a few little things and two bigger things.

Expecting it to be a large package for that price, I drove to the post office. However, the unsympathetic staff person emerged from the back with a box about the size of a Mac Mini. Wha? I thought perhaps the Irish were very good at packing things into little boxes. But when I got home I found that neither of my sweaters was in the box, and that the charm, the start of it all, was the wrong charm. And the irony of it all? They'd sent a four leaf clover charm, clearly, by mistake.