...and after the THREE HOUR ordeal last night trying to do a stupid mail merge so I could print address labels, I'm half afraid to even get in the car this morning! Well, and that won't be until after I seal the envelopes - and now I'm having a
Seinfeld flashback :-o.
Most years have some "issue". Either the design is hard to come up with, the painting takes forever, we can't come up with a name, the story on the back doesn't flow, we can't get the colors to print to our satisfaction OR the post office runs out of the stamps I want... This year the only thing that's gone smoothly is the stamps. After they ran out of holiday stamps last year, I bought early this year...and that's probably where the trouble started. The ole Christmas card jinx ;-).
* * * * *
We are rapidly running out of winter scenes - skating, sleighing, sledding, caroling, decorating barns and trees, knitting sweaters, baking cookies, snowman building, snowball fighting, live nativity play... Eating Christmas dinner seemed like a perfect choice, especially for this year.
With so many of our flock getting up there in years, we are now special feeding 13 of the "old guys". How on earth did
cute little Keebs get old? Ewen McTeagle is going to be 10?!? Jester is 17! We also feed the two lambs separately. Dinner time is, um, exciting, with everyone fighting for a spot at their respective troughs.
Okay, so that's a cute idea. There could be a main "table", a "kids table", Ford and Jester at the, what, "grandparents table"? Uh oh, so now we have yet another problem. For the story on the back, is it kids table? Kid's table? Kids' table? Seriously?!? A grammar dilemma? Grammar guides were consulted. Online searches were made. Phone calls to grammar police were made.
It was rapidly approaching the end of a Very Long Day at the
print shop and we were not going home empty handed. There was no solid consensus so we finally went minimalist (no apostrophes anywhere) and are now just waiting for a grammar judge to hand down a verdict.
Wait, let's back up to the painting problem part (see, even this blog post is becoming an ordeal!). As usual, I sketched the card out pretty quickly and was pretty happy with the layout. I should have stopped there. I then spent/lost an entire day (basically) screwing up the background...that I Paint The Same Way Every Year. Sigh...
I'd been feeling bad about the new kids always hogging the cards lately so a design featuring the classics was perfect...until I painted everyone in...and somehow lost Buddy. What the heck!?! Can't do the card without Buddy. Okay, B. Willard's been in several cards. I'll trade him out.
Wait...
I can't bring myself take B. Willard out...
By this point I've put so much paint on the canvas that I had to Sand It All Off...and start over.
I need to start this whole blog post over! Or move some paragraphs around like
a hard puzzle. It's going together as well as the card did ;-o. Actually, I really need to go out and feed (because every day is Christmas here ;-), so I'm just going to wrap this up with the finished card and everyone can pretend it all went smoothly...but I might seal those envelopes with a wet sponge just in case ;-).
Oh for crying out loud! I'm trying to scan the back of the card and the scanner won't turn on! :-o
Let's try this again.
Merry Christmas!!!
Sigh... Now I'm getting this error.
www.blogger.com’s server DNS address could not be found.
Okay, let's try this One. Last. Time.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!