Okay, Christmas cards, done. Even though I ran out halfway through and had to go to the card store and buy more. Which by the way has never happened to me EVER and I figured out it happened this year because of stupid going-all-of-2007-without-spending so I had to wait until January 1 to buy 50% off cards and by then the pickings were slim so I only bought three boxes, one box of which in retrospect were TOTALLY NOT ME and the entire time I was signing them I felt like a total impostor. They were all modern and edgy and I'm all who am I, Edie Sedgwick with these cards? So, anyway, I paid 900 dollars for cards today.
How many Christmas cards do you send out? I send out 80. I do not do that "If they don't send me one, I don't send them one" thing. Seems mean-spirited.
I know I have told this story before, but it bears repeating, if you ask me, and it's my blog. One time it was the day after Christmas and I was on my annual quest for half-off Christmas cards. I was standing there for an hour and a half with all the other women, choosing cards. This set? No, too dark. These? No, the message is too long. Hey, these are nice! No, the envelopes are blue.
Suddenly, bursting through the crowd was a man. He leaned in, grabbed the first cards he saw, and left. You have never seen anything so shocking in all your life. Men do not understand about cards. My father also says men never buy cotton balls. Is that true?
Also, I had to go to the post office today and buy stamps and I was SO TENSE about going and do you know how many people were ahead of me in line? None, that's how many. I have to remember I am not in LA anymore, hence the DOWN JACKET zipped up to my medulla oblongata. Anyway, I have to tell you I am disappointed in this year's Nutcracker stamps, which look less Nutcracker to me and more Animal from the Muppets. However, they were really colorful and they made the "42 cents" part of the stamp the same color as each Nutcracker character and they looked good on the envelope so in the end it was less of a tragedy and yes I DO realize only girls care about this sort of thing and that this is a run-on sentence of gargantuan proportions.
Speaking of grammar and punctuation, as I was running around stressing myself out about Christmas, the Elton John song Crocodile Rock came on, and I have to sing it like this: I remember when rock was young, Susie and I had so much fun...
I am unABLE to bring myself to say "me and Susie." Just writing it now sends shivers down my bottle. I mean, I was ALONE in the car. Who would have KNOWN? But still, I couldn't do it. And I have already told you that when that pretty song If I lay here, if I just lay here... comes on, I have to say "lie" every single time. I mean, it would have fit into the song perfectly well to say "If I LIE here," so why couldn't he have sung that? And the NEXT LINE is "would you lie with me and just forget the world." So why did he get it right THAT time but not the two times before? Why did nobody in the recording studio point this out? If I ever see that guy it is the first thing I'm gonna bring up. It is the only thing I'm gonna bring up. After that his people will probably take me away.
Also too today, I finished shopping for my aunt, her husband, my stepsister, my soldier, my stepfather, and my mother's dogs. Shut up. Oh, and my step-grandmother. I have not even begun Marvin yet. He is a pain in the patoot to shop for. And yes, he accepts Christmas gifts and also Hanukkah gifts. He is fine either way.
I wasn't going to tell you about my soldier, because I figure the best good deeds are those that no one knows about. BUT, in case anyone else wants to do this, I am going to come out.
There is this organization called Soldiers' Angels, and through them you can adopt a soldier. Now, there are other ways to help soldiers with them, but the way I did it was I committed to writing a letter once a week and sending a care package once a month. And if you are flummoxed about what to send a soldier in a care package, they have premade ones there that you can choose from starting as low as $11. Adopting a soldier is free, although when you sign up, one of the ways to prove you are you is to donate a dollar through PayPal, but you do not have to sign up that way, and I didn't.
Anyway, it's a nice thing to do if you feel like being good at Christmas, although what I feel like doing tonight is drinking 17 enormous Cosmopolitans and going to sleep under a big fluffy down comforter. In reality what I will be doing is making some hot chocolate and bathing Tallulah. It is a lot like how Patty and Selma, Marge's sisters on The Simpsons, think their lives are just like Sex and the City, isn't it?
