Oh, The X-mas Card List!

Every year it's the same routine. And yes, I do still send them out. Often on time.

Since my cards could be described as an ego trip, with some photo I've shot on the front, sometimes more, that's the first decision. Most years I know the second I see the picture in large format on my laptop, when it announces, "I'm the ONE!" Sometimes I know even before I see it. So step 1 is choose the picture(s).  Or let it/them choose me.

Step 1: Done.

Step two waits until sometime near mailing day when I have the time and energy to go to somebody's photo department, fight with their computerized system which is always, ALWAYS, different from the year before, just to plague me, and get whatever number of cards printed off, plus one. I do keep one for the records.

Somehow, organizing those records in never one of those steps, so step 3 is making sure the "from" name(s) appear on the card. Nowadays that is part of step 2. I'm also claiming paying in step 2, just because I'm too lazy to include it as a separate step.

Step 2: Done.

Step 3 then is composing and printing the year-in-review letter. There was a time I hunted for holiday themed paper to print them on, but it eventually became just too hard to locate the right paper. Its location is apparently another one of those things that certain shall-remain-nameless-mart stores keep changing just to get me, the potential customer, hiking all through the store looking for them, with the erroneous idea this will endear me to impulse buying a hefty portion of those gazillion items I'd never otherwise go past. Hey, guys, get a clue: your tactic just makes me clear the store faster with less energy to hunt for the things I'm actually looking to spend money on!  So, plain white printer paper again this year. Maybe its contents will be colorful enough to make up for it.

Step 3: Done.

Step 4 involves folding the letter, inserting everything into the envelopes provided, and sealing them.

Still working on that one.

I got diverted - not in an entertained way - by step 5. I start each year by printing out last years X-mas mailing list and trying to figure who died or became un-friended, who moved and to where, who goes on the list for the first time. Part of that actually comes before step 2, because I need the list to count how many cards get printed this year.

The worst part of course is verifying addresses. It's not just the grand kids who move, either. One friend moved within the same apartment building up one floor. One digit was all I needed, from a 4 to a 6. But it's important. Apparently small town postal workers no longer have that tiny bit of problem-solving in their list of job skills to a: recall the customer moved and uses a different box number in the same apartment lobby, and b: extrapolate that the card should now be placed in that new box rather than be returned to sender.

Yes, that happened.

I seem to recall hearing one pair of years-long friends retired and moved into a smaller home, but I'm not positive. Nobody calls each other any more, email addresses no longer work, I don't do Facebook. It occurred to me that I could Google one of them, and found out they're on Linked In. Hey, me too! I could go there... but Linked In refused to allow me access to my own account because they tell me they no longer support my email server. It's not Yahoo or Gmail or one of those big ones, so I guess I don't count. Funny, they still send me five or six messages a day at that old address, but....  Hey, if you two read this, and you know who you are, get in touch, will ya? Just remember, though, if you follow your usual pattern of sending your cards out in late January, getting yours from us will be even further delayed.

I'd really like to finish step 5.

Step 6: for those cards which have a confirmed destination, there's the writing the address out part, the hunting up enough return address labels and stamps that are not too obnoxious for the season part, and the affixing them part.

I'd like to finish that one too, and get on to the final step, #7: actually getting them into the mail. Or in a couple cases, skipping the stamp and hand delivering them. The first one of those has actually been handed out.

I'm quite proud of that, actually.