Christmas Card Hell

You cannot imagine how difficult it is for me to do Christmas cards. Many people breeze through the process; some even have a stamp made with their signatures on it -- "Thinking fondly of you. Deb and Rex" -- and simply assembly-line box after box. How can they do that?

This Christmas, I almost found out. I took two boxes of cards, retrieved a relatively new list of addresses, and forced myself to open each card and callously write, "Love, Debbi, Rex, Kayti and the other 28 animals here at the Stick Farm," with nary a thought as to who might be receiving it. Then I addressed envelope after envelope, callously going down the list of addressees and consciously willing myself to not think of the recipients lest I be moved to write a few extra lines with some fond or funny remembrance.

A smart person would have just (again, callously) stuffed the cards into the envelopes, added postage and put them in the mailbox. Had I done that, the cards would have been received well before the appointed holiday. Apparently, though, "smart" and "Phi Beta Kappa," "magna cum laude" and "summa cum laude" are not synonymous.

No, I couldn't leave well enough alone. I had to whip up a tiny little letter to accompany the cards, and, what's worse, aspire to include a tiny little picture. I knew it was a mistake, but I couldn't help myself.

Why was it a mistake, you ask? Several reasons:

A. My computer and its printer are not on speaking terms. They have crossed their respective arms and turned their respective backs to each other, and no amount of begging on my part can repair the relationship. So any documents, such as the aforementioned Christmas letter, must be emailed to someone who can print them out.

B. My husband, Rex, is the keeper of the digital camera, and he won't let me use it. I don't blame him; I've lost a number of digital cameras and/or the batteries that energize them. But it's quite inconvenient to have to set up a photo shoot.

C. My computer and Rex's digital camera are not on speaking terms, either. Rex is a very busy man, and uploading pictures and pasting them into my Christmas letters is not high on his priority list.

D. Once the letter is actually printed and copied, it's been so long that I have to spend a few days locating the cards and envelopes.

E. Finally, there is the folding and stuffing to do, and then one must acquire and apply postage, and dig up one of the 8,000 or so sheets of return-address stickers that I've received over the past year (never responding with a donation, of course) which have disappeared into some parallel universe, apparently.

F. Did I say "finally"? Silly me. The last, and possibly most crucial, step has arrived: dropping the envelopes into a mailbox.

By now it is past New Year's, and, as in most years, I'm tempted to say, the heck with it. Nobody wants to hear from me, anyway.

But I've come so far, and the effort has been so Herculean and has involved so much cooperation, however reluctantly given, and coordination, that I do eventually remember to stop at a post office. By now, of course, I have to comb the car for the envelopes, which were on the passenger front seat for the longest time, but migrated downward and backward in a poignant attempt to mail themselves.

If only I could have resisted writing the letter, how much happier we all would have been! Remind me next year.

Thinking fondly of you. Deb and Rex