Christmas is a little wonky this year…we can’t see Sean’s parents due to Covid, and we’re not going to Kentucky until January, so the only celebration on Christmas Day will probably be Sean and me getting sushi. (We do have one small gift each to exchange, at least.)
I’m sending 110 cards this year, maybe a couple more if I get last-minute addresses, and you should see how much room it takes up to lay them all out. Actually, 51 of them have already been mailed, but I still have cards all over my dining table and floor. This may be the most cards I’ve ever sent, but I can’t be sure; my spreadsheet has incomplete data for all years before 2020, and in 2021 I only sent cards as part of a fandom exchange, which didn’t end up logged in my spreadsheet either. In 2020 I sent 104 cards, which is pretty impressive, but I’ve beaten that record now.
My tree is up but only partially decorated. That’s better than last year, when I didn’t decorate it at all. In 2020 I went all out. I decorated everything before it was even Thanksgiving, and I left it all up through January. I was trying to keep my spirits up in that first year of the pandemic, and it actually worked pretty well. In 2021, though, I was not nearly as motivated, and I found working on decorating to be kind of a chore. This year I started decorating after Thanksgiving (Cheryl and Reid came here for the Thanksgiving meal, so I left my fall decor up for that), and I got everything but the tree (and my little trees) done fairly quickly, but the tree itself took me a minute. It’s a big job: first you assemble all the parts, then you fluff each and every individual branch, and then you have to put ornaments on! I guess if the tree was the only thing I did, it wouldn’t be as big a deal, but I also hang lighted and regular garland, set out a Christmas village, and put display pieces in my china cabinet and around the apartment. It’s a lot. I do love the results, though.
In any case, I will finish up these cards tomorrow (Wednesday at the latest), take them to get extra postage (unfortunately these remaining cards have turned out to be heavier than an ounce apiece because I put some fandom goodies in them), and be done. The international ones will be late, but hopefully a lot of the domestic ones will make it in time.
I’m not doing cookies this year, unless I happen to bake some when we go to Kentucky. I baked a bunch of cookies in the fall and that was enough cookies for a while. Besides, I have a ton of stuff to do; I don’t need to add any more projects!
Connor already got and opened his Christmas present; he lives in Florida, so I had to send him his gift directly instead of taking it with me to Kentucky (he’s going up for Christmas, but I won’t be there yet). We’re taking all the rest of the gifts with us in January, so I didn’t have to rush to ship them or anything when I realized it was too dangerous Covid-wise to travel over the holiday.
I really hope the pandemic actually ends someday.
In any case, that’s Christmas! I’m enjoying it a lot more this year than I did last year, and I’m excited for Kentucky. :)