Christmas 08 - "The Letter Debacle"

I try to be a good girl every year and get out a Christmas letter. After having kids, it became glaringly apparent that I just barely fit on the 'good girl' scale and "Christmas" just puts too much pressure on me - I hate a deadline. So in the spirit of true procrastinators everywhere - I made my deadline a little less strict. My personal deadline is St Patty's Day and my 'stretch goal' is Valentines Day. Of course, I don't normally publish the stretch goal - just in case I can't hit it.



But this year I rocked it - done by early January. Of course, many of you are thinking, 'Of course, you twit. You don't have a job. How could you NOT have them done?' To you I say (in my best Joy Turner voice {from "My Name is Earl"}) -- "Don't you JUUUUDGE me! There are THREE of them and they won't even wipe their own butts!"

Anyway - I was ready to print but Tony asked me to hold off until he finished his half marathon on 1/18 so I could put in his results. I'm blaming the rest of the fiasco on this event and Tony in general. So I held the printing, waited for Tony's results and then waited some more. In order to meet my 2/14 deadline, I started getting my butt in gear on about the 9th. So I sent the completed letter to work with Tony so he could print it in all it's glory - OK, just two-sided black and white. But I was going to make my deadline - that was it's 'glory'.

I get them all in the mail and get my first phone call in response on the 13th (CLEARLY ahead of deadline). In the phone call, my oldest friend says, "So did I just not rate a 'kid update' or were you just wanting to hear from me and wanted me to call for it?" Me, confused - huh?

Well, it turns out that Tony printed the front side twice -- front AND back. And I didn't think to CHECK it! Nobody got the 'kid update' in the second half of the letter.

That morning I had also gotten 3 back in the mail. They were SHREDDED by the USPS mail sorters. Since then I've had a steady stream of 'please resend the cash, my envelope was shredded'-type messages. Apparently my 48 card variety pack of Christmas Cards did not hold up in the mail sorter and most people only got the front panel of the envelope that contained both of the addresses. What a mess - I sent out about 45!!! Just to put you at ease - there was no cash in any of them.

Just so you know if you got it all....There was a very non-descript Xmas Card, a very creative letter (of which you would have seen half twice) and two very cute pics of the kids - Christmas and Halloween, both of which have been previously posted in this blog. I begin emailing out the letter, or something.... just since I bothered to make it and all.

Drats.