Fa la la la la

I’M DONE WITH ALL MY CHRISTMAS STUFF!! Glo o o o o o o o o o o o o o ria ! Eat egg shells each day-0! Glo o o o o o o o o o o o ria! Eat egg shells each day-ay-o!
Well, except for one thing.
I love sending out Christmas cards (as I mentioned last year.) I think I love sending them mostly because of how much I love getting them, but also because I love writitng my Christmas letter. I think about it for weeks before I write it, and I try to make it a little unique every year, and it’s really fun for me. So a couple weeks ago while I was at Costco, I picked up some of my Christmas cards. I like to get one of those variety boxes where all the cards are different and they all kinda have a hand-made look to them. Anyway, the wiser, cooler angel on my left shoulder was saying to me, “Ann, at a time when you should really be saving money, do you really need to get those Christmas cards?” And the stupid impulsive devil on my right shoulder was saying, “Cork it, cheapskate. Ann, don’t think about what’s wise for the future–live in the now!” And they had it out for a few minutes and the devil won, so I bought the cards. But anyway, I was finally able to sit down and scratch out a Christmas letter, and April came and took our picture, and I had them developed, and everything was ready to go. And as I began to put a letter and a picture in the cards, I thought again about what a waste of money those dang cards were–considering I don’t even write hardly anything in them. The only purpose they really serve is to hold the letter and picture. So anyway, since I had bought them, I went ahead and sealed them all up and addressed them and they were ready to go. Well at some point in my preparation, I had noticed that up in the little box on the envelopes where the stamp goes, there was a litte message that said, “May require extra postage.” Hmm. So I stopped by a shipping place on Tuesday night to have one weighed. Well, to my disgust, the girl told me that they would each be around 79 cents because they weighed over an ounce, and they were bumpy and would not run properly through the machine. Whatever. So I went to the post office yesterday morning for a second opinion only to be told that the cards would actually be counted as small parcels and would therefore cost more than a dollar each to mail. Can you believe that! These people are out of their minds! If I had only listened to the other shoulder! So anyway, what am I supposed to do now? Well, I remember that I did buy and send out the same cards last year, and I didn’t seem to have a problem then, so I decided to try a little experiment. I mailed one of my cards to each of my friends that live in Eugene (since they’d get them the soonest) and I put one stamp on one of them and two stamps on the other, and I’m waiting to see if either of them gets delivered. If the one with one stamp gets delivered, I’ll go ahead and mail them all out. If only the one with two stamps gets delivered, I may just mail the ones going to my grandmas, and if neither of them gets delivered, I’ll just have to send out a Christmas email. Lame.
I cannot stand to feel like I am wasting money. I know everyone spends money differently and different things are worth more or less to different people, but buying 27 cards that cost well over a dollar each to mail definitely falls in the “wasting money” category to me. (I do have to admit, that luckily for me, not all of the cards I bought were the Costco ones. The other ones I got were fine, so atleast 12 people will be getting a card.)
This whole horrible ordeal reminds me of how much I hate it when I realize I have not gotten a good deal. Almost everything I buy is one sale, and I’m not kidding—when I buy something and then find out that I could have gotten it cheaper somewhere else, I seriously have to breath through it and keep myself from screaming. It bothers me that much. It’s like last year when I went to Reed & Cross’s going-out-of-business sale and I bought this stupid Christmas fern thing for 15% off(ooohh, try not to go crazy with your discounts, Reed & Cross)–so it cost $60– and then I went to Home Depot and saw the same exact ferns for $19.99! I tried to remain calm as I furiously shuffled through purse to find my receipt. “All sales are final?” AHHHHHHHH! I wanted to die.

But ANYWAY—not counting the card fiasco, my Christmas stuff (including gifts, stocking stuffers, Christmas Eve dinner stuff, shipping, etc.) is all done and now I can just sit back, watch Christmas movies, listen to Christmas music, and frost Christmas cookies. Ahhhhh….

P.S. You know what makes me so sad? Brian doesn’t care about Christmas nearly as much as I do(which is probably similar to all of your husbands). In fact, he’s seemed a little upset lately. I am so grateful, though, that he goes along with most of my craziness. And atleast I have Camp to be excited with me.