With Christmas cards, it's "do or die!"

For the record, I don’t procrastinate. I don’t put things off until the last minute or start singing Annie’s “Tomorrow” song when faced with a HUGE thing to do. I USED to procrastinate, yes. Especially when I was in college and had two days to read 150 pages for English Lit. (AAH!) But nowadays, if something needs to get done, then I make it a point to “get ‘er done.” When it comes to life being so crazy-busy, however, or the holidays have me spinning in circles, things don’t get done right away. Or sometimes, I figure out the best way to do something.

Or sometimes, I get busy!

In this case, I just got busy.

I DID NOT want to be late with Christmas cards this year. I wanted to get ALL the cards out on time. That’s all well and good, but I realized something this year: If I want to get all the Christmas cards out on time, I need to plan ahead. Didn’t this year, which is why I kept running out of cards, why I kept running out of stamps and why I was so late getting everybody’s addresses who I didn’t have addresses for.

That is what happened. I just kept running out of cards, running out of stamps and being so late getting addresses. (As it is, we got one card returned from someone who moved since last time we sent her a card. I guess she forgot to give us her new address.)

Today, I got the last 5 out of 50-something cards I have to send out this year. The rest will either be e-cards or unsent. I decided to send e-cards after I couldn’t remember how much I need for postage to send one to Canada. (Last year, I tried to mail something to one of my Canadian friends, and the mailman left it in my mailbox with a note saying “(this much) needed to send mail to Canada.”) And, yes, of course I KNOW I can spend a delightful few hours standing in line at the post office to get enough postage on cards going out to Canada (and England and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and... ) but after spending a long time in line at the post office already to mail stuff (and get more stamps!), I decided that one visit was enough.

But, yes, I mailed the last of the actual cards today. Woo-hoo!

And, I know, it’s soo close to Christmas. Those cards might not even arrive until AFTER Christmas. But I got ‘er done. Mission accomplished!