Annual Hair Pulling

I have to be careful, as there is less hair to pull these days. But I go through this every year, under the delusion that it just has to get easier this time, right? I should be experienced. The process shouldn't change.

As if!

I'm referring to the annual holiday cards. The photo was picked out as a top contender the second I started shooting the very brief scene. The only other contender I've already posted here, so what would be the point? And, no, I'm not duplicating the card's photo here, even though I know how. I'll just tell you about the frustration.

I started out in Walgreens. It's closest. There is one photo machine, and it has a chair, which is a bonus. It also became apparent very quickly that it had super high prices for the amount of cards we want to send out. While I was letting the cost sink in, I got a recorded phone call from Walmart that my prescription, ordered just two hours earlier, was ready to pick up. That's my excuse for that decision being made.

Note that I've caught Steve's bug, though managed a milder version. It's enough that we'll all be missing the club X-mas party tonight, because I won't share it. One of the people I'd be closest to caught covid early and has had ongoing lung issues ever since. She can't be around people coughing , and by evening, I can't stop. Typical cold for me. Hospital for her.

We've also run nearly out of sugarless cough drops, tissues, and several other things needed to handle a second cold in the family, so Walmart was a planned shopping stop. May as well add photo cards to the list. After getting everything else on my list, and still managing not to cough inside the store yet, and not having my nose drip all over inside my mask, I headed to the photo department. Cool: 4 machines. Not cool: no stools or chairs. I decided to head home and not push my luck avoiding sharing my germs. While driving I finalized my plan for how it should look and what it should say in my head.

Now that is always an invitation for frustration. They never provide what exactly it is I want. The first thing every year is to avoid Christmas themes. We celebrate, but culturally, not religiously. A tree with decorations and sending gifts is fine. We even listen to some traditional music, with Nutcracker top of the list, and anything else for the nostalgia of it. We watched "A Christmas Story" on TV last night. Somehow it was much funnier than when I watched it the first time. But anyway, the card theme can be winter, or Happy Holidays, or whatever. Much is celebrated this time of year, including the New Year. So something for everybody.

Once that is selected for, I needed a 5x7 option rather than a 4x8 one. It's a single photo, not a collage. The photo is squarish, so the 5x7 had to be vertical. A horizontal presentation cut the photo in half and not the best half. Everybody insists that text goes across the top and/or bottom, leaving a narrow slice of the photo. I had to find something else. Up to this point is wasn't too difficult, although the Walmart website kept insisting on offering boxed commercial cards instead of something from the photo studio no matter which option from their menu I selected for. Eventually I decided to start my search by department and not item.

You think I'll remember that for next year?

I thought I found the right card - right enough, anyway - and started trying to put my text on it. Everything went wrong with that. It wouldn't give me a way to delete existing text. I couldn't type new text, or get it in the right place. It's default setting was to place it over the photo! My only choice was to shut down my laptop because there was no option to exit or cancel otherwise. After cooling off, waiting, then turning my computer back on after a forced quit, it returned to the exact same page. I just needed to go back to my Firefox menu and pick a totally new site to visit. Weather was a good choice. It's quit raining, for a while.

I decided to try Walgreens online. $Ouch! Then Target. Slightly cheaper $ouch! Back to Walmart then. This time I got into a different selection of cards, finally found one that would do. and fought my way through it. I do mean fought! It still didn't want to put things where I wanted them to go, made me fight for the size of font which reset my previous choices of where and what to say as well as sticking it back over the photo. At least this time I could detour back to a previous page, work my way through again, and eventually make progress.

Final choice: home delivery? Or store pick-up? I thought home delivery would be fine,  until I was just about ready to pay. That's when they got around to letting me know it was guaranteed to be here by... January 11! Luckily it let me change my mind. They want to text me when my order is ready in the store, but I didn't provide a phone number for a phone which doesn't text. It should be done right about now as I finish this. I plan to have lunch first, hungry or not and with no taste buds functioning at the moment, Then I'll ask Steve once he wakes if he's interested in coming along. Finally I'll see if my nose has dried a bit in the meantime or not. 

But cards should be out this week. That will be the easy part of all this. Until the bad addresses come back. It's always people we can't contact any other way. One would think the list gets shorter each year, but it gets longer. Kids grow up, move out. New friends are made. If you think you are missing your card from us after another week, send one with a GOOD return address. We haven't moved.