For Sir Kelly Lee

Sometimes I create situations for myself. Like this story. We have a cousin who got a new email address and sent it to me. I realized I didn't have a postal address for their family, but rather than just ask for that too, I wrote him the following reply:

okay, now i have a real email address, so if you'd tack on your postal address, you'll become of the lucky jeuls christmas card recipients. people all over the world will envy you. you'll display it proudly on your fridge, or perhaps inside your bathroom medicine cabinet. when nosy people peak inside to see what drugs you're snarfing, they'll see my christmas card, and promptly forget about your drugs, so distracted and amazed, nay, green with envy that you got one. you'll hire security detail to stand outside the bathroom to check them when they come out. they'll know this, so they'll regretfully leave said card there, and go away plotting how they, too, could get their hands on this much coveted card. they'll start scheming on how to get into the family, believing this to be the best course of action. boys far too old will start trying to arrange to marry your girls. as for you, it'll become next to impossible for you to walk unescorted in public because people will try to get close to you in an effort to get on my christmas card list. it'll make our trek to Olive Garden look like a sprint in comparisson. all because you sent me your address.

Why I do these things is beyond me...but there it was. Now I had to come up with some magnificent Christmas card or lose face. So One night, I started this project. I took lots of old christmas cards, and cut them into 2x2" squares.











Then I hole punched 8 holes into each square.













Once completed, I laid them out in a grid on the floor, and then with a needle & yarn, I stitched these paper squares into what ended up being a pretty massive quilt-esque-thingy. This process took me all night. I do mean all night. I finished just as the sun cracked the inky black sky of night. I have no idea what demon possessed me. perhaps an attractive nocturnal vampire snuck in and bit me with crazy-insomniac-craft-venom fangs or something.

My original idea was to create an outrageous looking card to send to our cousins...you know, to make good on my ridiculous claim and all. But I spent SO MANY HOURS working on this, without any clear direction about where I was going with it, that it didn't really look anything like a card when it was done.

I hadn't decided exactly what I was going to do with it till my kids woke up in the morning and saw it. For some bizarre reason that is probably attributable to their unfortunate maternal genetic inheritance, they wanted to hang it on the wall...like a big, 2'x2' paper quilt.

So I ended up not sending it to our cousins after all. Sorry sorry sorry Sir Kelly & Stacy! I know that you're gnashing your teeth because you want it bad now, and it makes you even more insane to know it was intended for you, yet all you got was the same, vanilla card that everyone else got this year. And in a twist of irony, this year was probably the least interesting card I've sent in history. My deepest apologies for not coming through. I had all the best of intentions. And I'm up to my ears now with book deadlines. But someday I'll make good on my promise. And that's a promise!