Thrilling News For Everyone!

Yes....yes, it's true.

Everyone rejoice!

We have HAD the thank you notes in our hot little hands, half-done, as one of those projects that you keep meaning to get back to, that occasionally haunt your dreams and make you question your own competence and decency as a human being.


We got them out and worked on them on our first anniversary trip, to make them special; here I am writing one:




Ian and I worked on them together; I loved the idea of him writing thank-you notes to MY side of the family, and vice versa, as a gesture of family unity, but we settled on assigning him the people who wouldn't form--or completely revise--their opinion of his intelligence once they saw his hopelessly bad spelling. After that, sometimes we decided by who had the more meaningful thing to say, or by who had the funnier idea.

And they were almost done, I'd say, oh, six months to a year ago. Then I got distracted by other projects and completely daunted by the idea of recollecting the addresses that were obsolete. It's amazing how many of one's acquaintances MOVE in a year! Or MIGHT have moved....

Now, originally, I was all determined to be competent at this. At first, my idea was to open a gift and immediately write the thank-you note, and not open any present we didn't have time to write the note for.

Ha! We moved in and realized all the things we didn't have: dish drainer. Mop, broom, dustpan, buckets. Plunger. Enough pots and pans. Dish soap. Shower curtain. About 50 other things that we needed urgently. And we realized that we'd better open the presents so that we didn't buy duplicates, and providentially we had been given some cash and Target cards, and dashed out and bought those things. Totally wrecked the great system I had read about in the etiquette book.

Then, when we were about 80% finished, I kept postponing because I never seemed to have the money for all that postage. I finally realized that I was doing this and went out and bought a roll of 100 stamps.

Then I realized that the careful list I'd kept of who gave us what was incomplete. I experienced agonies of shame at the idea of approaching people eight months later to ask them what we should be thanking them for, and made Ian and my dad do it.

That was when I began to realize how many addresses we would have to recollect. And we wanted to distribute announcements at Oaks Park, where we met, and mail everything at the same time, and as long as we got them out within the year we weren't TERRIBLE people, right?

I forget why we didn't finish last summer, actually. It would have made sense, wouldn't it?

Anyway, this spring I have been on a tear of efficiency and finishing the thank-yous was DEFINITELY on my list. And then yesterday I went to the post office to mail some postcards and learned from my favorite postal clerk that STAMPS WERE GOING UP TWO CENTS ON MAY 14!

Now, you can't exchange stamps and pay the difference to get the correct 'wattage'. Maybe the post office is afraid that someone will make a killing exchanging forgeries, I don't know. But I was about to have one hundred 24 cent stamps on my hands that would be worthless without one hundred 2 cent stamps that wouldn't fit on the little cards!

So thank the post office for your cards, in more ways then one! They are the straw that finally broke my back. I was NOT going to be buying a whole extra set of two cent stamps and cramming them onto my cute little postcards. It was time for this to be DONE. I sat down at 6:30 last night and worked on them straight through till midnight, worked on them at my desk when it was slow at the office, and then over lunch. I went to the post office today for more stamps and they are going to be done tonight! I slept 5 1/2 hours last night and my shoulder is sore now, but they are going to be done!

DONE!!! HAHAHA!

Oh, sweet rapturous release!

Hopefully some of those very thank you notes [and announcments--better late than never, right?] brought you to our blog. Write us a message and let us know you were here! We'll be ecstatic, trust me.

So, some recent highlights:

Two weeks ago I volunteered at Outdoor School for the first time in 5 years. It was wonderful.

This week I will be going to spend a week with Lindsay Person [of TWU fame] and help out with her new baby, Zeke! Everybody's having all these babies all the time [among my friends, six to date, all BOYS!] and it's clearly time for me to be useful.



And next week, on Saturday May 19th, 7 pm, Steffie and I will be having a joint birthday party at my house! Ian has taken on clearing space in the basement so people can dance. There will be cake and probably games and rootbeer and regular beer and EVERYTHING! YEAH!!

Oh, I'll be 27. Stef will be like, 25. Congratulate her on achieving oldness, by the way. It will make her feel good!

Here's us when we were not old:



Oh, Ian wants everyone to know that Saturday Morning Football is now twice a week; 11 am Saturday, and now Thursdays at 4 pm at 12th and Stark. For more info:

http://www.myspace.com/saturdaymorningfootball

For more info about Ian, harass him to write an entry on the blog!