Ah, The Christmas Letter....

It starts out as follows: 

"Hello All,

Ah, the infamous Christmas letter, that tradition where you brag about all the wonderful things you and your entire family have accomplished, the wonderful places you’ve visited, and how proud and grateful you are about all of it.

Wait! You remember that this is 2020, right? Adjusting……"

If you're on our X-mas card list, you'll have the rest of it to read for yourself. I won't put you through that twice. It's wrapped around this year's card, another "Heather Special". And like the letter, it has a unique 2020 theme to it. All my cards are unique in having my pictures on them, often themes unrelated to the holiday, but this one goes above and beyond a bit. Covid, eh? Yet hopefully, festive as well.

As long as you haven't moved since last year without letting us know the new address, yours is on its way. It was an accomplishment, and not just because there were 55 going out this year. Oddly, the part which is usually the hardest, getting the photo card right, was the easiest this year. I've gone to Walgreens, Target, and WalMart in previous years, each time fighting with their machines every step of the way. Always a store employee was required to step in. The photos wouldn't go into the right space. They wouldn't get cropped right or positioned correctly within their frame. The messaging wouldn't go right, no font size changing, the switch between capital and lower case a carefully guarded proprietary secret, and lest you learned any of those secrets and managed to remember then from the previous year, the software changed in the last 12 months. Add many years where the scooter wouldn't approach the machine, or the stool etched holes in your hip bones while you squirmed in frustration, making patience even less possible.

Add in covid avoidance, and this year the cards were ordered online. Piece of cake! Found the one collage card with the right number of picture slots in the right shapes for the pictures - mostly horizontal, not vertical - as well as a greeting that said exactly what I wanted, still leaving three lines for personalization, the ability to change font type, size, and location within its space. I had picked those exact pictures with that exact message in mind, and finally got a way to do it simply and quickly. I must admit it was the third company I tried, but WalMart had it.

They must have heard my complaints from previous years, right?

OK, finish the order, go to pay, and find out they will be delivered the ... 17th? That late? But it was done, and turned out they arrived Monday the 14th. By then the accompanying letter was written, - with only 1 typo: can you find it? - so it was time to hit the printer. But hey, you remember that the library was full of everything we had to clear out of the kitchen while it was getting a little refurbishing? It was carefully stacked up on the floor in there, in drawers or totes, precisely in the way between the printer, quite low on paper at the moment, and the shelf holding more paper. 

Good thing I had shelves built in, securely attached, for me to hold on to while leaning way-y-y-y-y-y over to the shelf so I didn't actually fall onto I-don't-want-to-know-exactly-what-but-it-wouldn't-have-felt-good!

The printed letters got folded in thirds, the card inserted, and stuffed into the enve.... Oops. Nope. Too wide. Those envelopes which come with the 4"x8" cards do not accommodate 8 1/2" wide paper. The scissors, of course, are in one of those drawers in the library, so similar gymnastics are in order. Glad nobody was there to grade me on grace and style. I haven't been accused of either of those for, well, decades. Finally, once half the margins were trimmed off on both sides, envelopes were stuffed, addressed, stamped, and checked off the list. (There I go, lists again! Goes a long ways towards making up for aging brain.)

There were way too many to fit the clip at the door where we put the occasional outgoing letter, and it was in time to make the evening pick-up from the big boxes at the post office, so... Road Trip! OK, so not that far, really, but that's about as close to a road trip as it gets these days. I arrived at top rush hour at the post office, which turned out to be much more complicated than expected. Let's see if I can describe it.

Fortunately there is a stoplight at the corner of Bell Road and 98th Ave. Turn left off Bell and... stop. Sit. There is a line ahead of you, just one line serving two locations. The first one is left into the parking lot for those going into the post office. The lot is full. Its drive is a loop, and you can't return into the loop if you've managed to go around without finding a spot. You can exit back onto Bell from the loop, right turn only, once traffic clears enough for those three cars ahead of you to go first. Or you can exit onto 98th. A right turn gets you to Bell at the light, also usually a wait. So exiting traffic backs up. It's even worse when the car exiting onto 98th wishes to make a left because they have to fight through the jammed up line of people waiting to get into the post office. It becomes a vicious feedback loop. They can't give a space because you're the car blocking the exit to make more space so they can move so you can leave....

Then there are the people like me who are in line to go a little further for the left turn into the short curved drive past three humongous boxes for dropping off letters, one box for metered, two for stamped. We are stuck in the first line until we can get past their turn because nobody wants to block all the other neighborhood traffic. You have one wide lane each direction on 98th, half of it for through (or wannabe) traffic, the other half of the lane for those navigating the post office. Once in the curve, there is a wait for those in front of you to dump their mail by the handfuls into the proper slots from their drivers' windows. Luckily for me, the boxes hadn't filed up yet, so my three handfuls went in and disappeared. 

Now I could go fight my way back to the light. Not everyone was polite enough to leave a full space to eke through, or have no earthly idea just how far out their back ends hang over the curb and into the lane while they wait for an opening they knew was going to open right up just when they got there... and didn't. Luckily for me, KBAQ 89.5 FM plays great classical music through the process, and they are thoughtful enough to have just finished their fundraising pleas so all we get is music.

Should all go well from here, your letters/cards should arrive. Sometime. Maybe still this year. But honest, they are in the mail. It's not like the check I just sent up to Minnesota for deposit in my credit union, mailed on the third, arriving the 15th, so with no check there should be nothing to slow them down. Right?