Category: The Letter

Well, a full year later.  I just went back to one of the first posts on this blog and noticed it was from December 17th of 2016.  Today is December 18th of 2017.  A year has passed.  Today was “Get The Letter Out” day.  I had six boxes of Washington calendars, three boxes of printed letters from Kinkos, and two boxes of envelopes from Girlie Press.  It’s quite an undertaking.  My friend Tim Allen showed up as he always does and he and I and David, along with my wonderful and amazing office staff, Tracie and Jeannette and Lindy, knocked this project out in record time.  We finished by lunch time.  (I treated since it’s my work party!)  After lunch everyone drifted off and I sat there and patiently counted every piece of this mailing.  I kept them in perfect zip code order for Renee who will pick them up tomorrow and take them to the dreaded Bulk Mail Unit at the post office.  I stood them on end ever so neatly in eight boxes.  The lowest zip code was the first calendar in box one and the highest zip code was the last calendar in box eight.  Total count this year:  565

 

I finished writing the letter last night, Wednesday.  I dropped it off for “printing” at Kinkos today.  It’s the same skit every year.  They ask what I want and I show them the originals and say, “Front to back.”  They say how many and I say, “575” and they stop cold and say we can’t possibly do that today because . . . . blah blah blah blah.  I explain that I know it might take a day or two and to just do the best you can.  I plan for this.  My stuffing party isn’t until Monday.  Today is Thursday.  “I’m calm, I’m calm, I’m perfectly calm, I’m utterly under control . . . ”

As soon as I was in my car things that I forgot to mention about 2017 started popping into my head.  All of a sudden little stories are floating up to the surface.  Great.  Where were these floating thoughts when I was in the midst of it and feeling pressure?  I’m exhausted now but perhaps later I’ll start a PS segment on this blog.  PS as in “post script,” NOT as in Palm Springs.

I can finally relax.  December 17th and I can finally relax.  I just hugged and kissed David and Opal and waved goodbye as they drove off on a road trip to Palm Springs.  I am alone and calm, things are progressing as planned.

Today THE LETTER could start arriving at people’s homes.  The mass mailing went off without a hitch this year (as far as I know since this is the first year I didn’t actually go to the bulk mail division of the post office and mail it myself).  I picked the 20 page missive up at Kinkos, took it to my office, and with 5 helpers stuffed it into next year’s calendars, then stuffed those into envelopes, then sealed the envelopes, then labelled the sealed envelopes, and then sorted and counted them by zip code.

537.  This year the mailing was 537 pieces.  At this point this year I was done. Usually at this point my faithful friend Tim and I would box these up, load them into our cars, and drive to the bulk mail post office.  It was always a negative experience for me.  Stressful.  Depressing.  They have crAZy forms that must be filled out by doing complicated math while following about 17 rules the Postmaster has devised to make the experience miserable.  (Really, I’m good with most math but theirs is most complicated with multiple factors that each have 5 numbers trailing the decimal point and that vary based on quantities to certain zip codes and by piece weight and, my favorite part, the teeny-tiny boxes on the form that you can’t fit a 7 digit number into neatly.)

Last summer I was dreading this out loud to my friend Matt and he told me there was a woman who worked in his office who did this for hire around the holidays to make extra money.  I called her in July and literally set a date and time for her to pick these up in December.  We settled on 2:00 PM on Thursday December 15th.  I wanted to get on her radar early and secure a slot.  This gave me a writing deadline that I don’t usually have.  But it also gave me peace.  Renee arrived at the exact time we set back in July and I sighed with relief and turned my focus to getting David packed and on the road for Palm Springs.

Today I finished writing our 2016 Christmas Letter.  I was exhausted and working on a deadline so I never proofed it, I just took it to Kinkos and said, “600 copies please.”  And now I’m staring at WordPress pages wondering if I can blog.  And more to the point, can I blog well enough to replace 600 copies of a 20 page letter?