Fourth and Long

I had almost given up. I had nearly given in. My Christmas cards were going to win this year. It would be the first year in over 20 that I wasn’t able to come up with some creative, catchy, thematic, homemade original card/picture/letter to send to my friends and fam. I nearly admitted defeat.

I had made cards over the holiday weekend. I wasn’t happy with them at all, but I had spent hours cutting and stamping and coloring and gluing and hating every second of it. I had tried a couple of rough drafts at a letter but nothing came from them. I had helped my brother write his (which he never does) and I thought for certain it had sapped all my creativity and now I would be left with none for my own.

So last night I was sitting on the floor with my puppy who seemed ill and I was watching football and chatting with G on messenger and I was complaining about not having my card idea. They are ALWAYS in the mail by December 1st and it was really getting close. I watched the Colts, I talked to G. I cheered for the Steelers, I responded to G. And it finally hit me….football.

G wasn’t too excited about the idea initially but today I improved greatly upon the rough notion that existed in my head last night and he threw in a few great lines that helped it even more.

I stopped at the craft store on my way home from work and invest FAR more money than you can imagine in MORE supplies to make NEW cards that will go with the football theme. LM and I worked on them tonight and they’re crafty but cute. The letter will get polished and printed tomorrow, the picture will be taken tomorrow night and duplicated at nauseum on Thursday and then the cards will be stuffed, sealed, stamped and mailed. ON TIME!!

THE DID NOT BEAT ME!!!

(Note to anyone out there toying with the idea of stepping it up a notch and doing more than just signing their store-bought cards this year: DO NOT DO IT. Once you start, you can’t stop. Relatives write and say how much they look forward to your cards every year. Grandparents show you the box where they have saved each and every one. Complete strangers on the street say, “ooooh you’re the one…”)

Oh, and if you were thinking that I was going to show you what the cards look like or copy the letter here for you to read YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING!! December 1st they are released. Not a moment sooner. You’ll have to stand in line outside the door until then.



On a completely different note, I need some advice from any dog-owners out there. I live in an upstairs condo. I have to physically take my dog out when he needs to go which means I need shoes in this kind of weather. It would be oh-so-handy for said shoes to live at the bottom of the stairs on the mat where the mud and grime can drip off instead of tracking up my stairs, but poocherooski here thinks he needs to chew on my shoes if I leave them when I go to work. I have tried spraying them with bitter spray. I have tried moving them up the stairs but in an open-faced cabinet. I don’t know what to do!! I need shoes in a convenient spot down there, but he EATS them. I dare not say how many shoes he has eaten for fear of proving how much of a slow-learner I am. I just keep thinking he’ll quit. But he doesn’t. He never ever chews them when I’m home. But he knows he has done something wrong as the moment I come home, he’ll peek at me at the top of the stairs and then run into the living room. HELP!!

Comments

Jan Jirka said…
Where is it that you live?
I wish I could be there as well because it's already november there.
Do you know whether they'll kick me out of school or not? Thx.

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