Ten little Xmas cards.
You'd have thought I was building a monster bridge instead of just bridging some gaps.
Cards to lovely people who send me pictures of their growing children each year and are left to wonder about mine. Cards to family who I, by design, haven't talked to in over a year. Cards to people mad at me, people given up on me, people... gosh, I don't know what more to say about them.
My first ever cheesy holiday letter. At least it was embellished with lots of pictures of us along the borders. Looked pretty nifty actually. Well printed, heavy stock paper.
Cards filled with school and baseball pictures of my kid. Dove into picture packages going back over two years. People will see my youngster transform from a baby to a mature boy all in one envelope.
I sound equally accommodating and cheery in each. Regardless of what I feel.
When they go in the mail box tomorrow, I will have such a weight off.
Until next year.
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7 comments:
I find it almost comical how many people use the holidays to send out pics and letters to make up for the past year of non-communicado. For me that one card resolves the guilt for another 364 days.
ditto
I say forget the guilt - I don't even bother sending out cards anymore. I am so tired of feeling guilty about how other people feel.
*thinks to myself* I really need to get my cards out.
The stupid part is that I used to send about 125 each year, back when it was just ex and I.
I was so adamant about doing them that the first Thanksgiving ex spent in Korea, I brought Xmas cards for us to do to occupy time as we were on trains etc. Each card would carry both our writing (I was also adamant about one signing one's own name) and had the postmark from the Army PO in Korea.
Since living up here (and I've probably only sent cards twice), I have even gone to the nearby historical landmark so as to get their postmark on my cards. I thought about doing that today, but decided not to b/c that would open a whole 'nother can of worms - I'm sure all the cards are overweight and I don't want to pay! (And at the holidays, I'm sure they won't return them to me for add'l postage.) Bah humbug.
You didn't! A cheesy holiday letter? Really?
I finally finished my cards today, after deciding to copy my sister and skip some cousins who probably won't send me cards. Before blogging, I used to get my cards out shortly after Thanksgiving, rather than on December 21 and 22! But you know what? I've sent out about 50, and received about 20. So fuck 'em all!
(And I'll probably cave and do a holiday letter when my kid's older.)
Although I emailed it, I'm going to stick it here, too. A comment to Orange about why I sent with doing a cheezy holiday letter...
I think it occurred to me to do a holiday letter in October (it was a few days before Halloween actually and my goal was to get them out in oddball fashion by Nov 1 to beat the rush) and I started it then. Almost 2 months later, it finally went out today. I'm not so good with deadlines anymore.
Probably the main reason I did it was b/c I could make it artsy - I used Word and inserted pics along the margins of the letter, so it looked like scattered photographs. I had 3 of J w/his activities, one of P and I at engagement, one of P and his daughter, two of my pastels, and 2 of our cats. I liked the format, so it made the rest tolerable. It certainly didn't go month by month through the year and had minimal bragging to be sure.
I feel less odd about doing it than I would have anticipated - muchly b/c it looked really good and I could include lots of images.
When you find something that suits your needs, you'll feel better about doing one in the future. For a long time, I took a picture of J, used about 2 rolls of film and one hour developing (and a lot of frustration), got 100 reprints made at ridiculous prices, and sent cards after inserting the pictures into the frames. I don't know what I was thinking. Technology is much better now.
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