Withdrawals...

Okay, so I promised myself no writing for the day... I was going to leave BITTERMOON alone and just chill with my Glitterspun monstrosity and let my brain veg... but BITTERMOON is calling, so, in order to keep my promise to myself, I'm back on the blog, telling the story of this year's Christmas cards, because, frankly, it was pretty frickin' funny--after they were all mailed, that is.

Every year we do the Christmas letter--it's become my thing. Usually we get professional pictures of the kids taken and stuff them in the envelopes, but this year we were tight on money, so we just did a b/w montage on the back of one of the pages, and had the kids sign the cards and, voila, Mate prints out the envelopes and we're done.

You'd think it would be that simple, wouldnt'ya?

The computer ink was NOT happy about the texture of the envelopes--blurry blurry blurry...but it was two days after Christmas, and I figured--what the hell--it's easier to read than my handwriting, isn't it? Funny I should think that because...

I took one last look at the addresses to make sure we had them all--you know, didn't forget Uncle Jay in Twain-Hart, that sort of thing? "Hey...hon...where's Jennie? And Kelly? And Roxie? And half your relatives? And all of your friends at Intel?"

Mate: "Uh..."

Me: "You, uh, wanted to send cards to your friends at work, didn't you? Right?"

Mate: "Well, uh, yeah..."

Now, ordinarily, this would have been no big thing, but we were having this converesation as we were getting ready to go visit his mom in Ophir, because we were going to send the cards on the way. So I did something I hate doing--and something the post office would rather I not--I hand addressed about 15 cards in a moving vehicle while Mate stopped at Kinkos and made 15 more copies of the Christmas letter, and suddenly our car turned into a rolling Christmas card sweatshop. I addressed, Trystan folded and stuffed, Bryar signed, and Mate apologized. "I'm sorry...I thought I had them all..." I ignored him, for the most part. It's one of those stupid little things that I know I'll forgive him for later, but while I'm trying to read and write in a moving vehicle I don't want to speak, lest I open my mouth and horrible things fly out. (no, not THAT--unlike my heroine, I don't have a hair-trigger stomach...) When we got to the post office, we made the family effort complete as Cave Troll and I walked the cards to the mail box in batches-- he really got off on that part--he got to send! About the only thing that would have made the family effort more complete would have been if we'd let Arwyn drool on them, and it was a near thing because she kept reaching as we passed them back and forth across the car.

But at last, it was done. All but Uncle Jay in Twain-Hart--but I'm getting to him today!

Oh, and hey...



A picture of the Lady-in-Red's baby gift, because, well, she praised me so wonderfully, and I sort of agree--it turned out very sweet. (It's for the baby-in-red:-) And, a picture of Arwyn. Because I can;-)

Have a very nice day!