This weekend, while I was at my parent's house, I got to admiring their Christmas Cards Received Already This Year collection. I admired not for the beauty of the cards or the warm fuzzy wishes held within each. Nay! Not for anything as sweet and nice as that! ;) I admired the sheer size of the stack. Not that size matters or anything like that. It just made my stack pale in comparison. Mainly because my stack was non-existent. I had nada cards. Zip. Zilch. A great big sad zero. Zero, the anti-hero anti-number. I had mega nothing.

I thought (admiringly so), 'I haven't gotten any Christmas cards this year. None. No one has shown the love. Not even grandma!'

And I was bummed.

I don't receive many xmas cards, but there's usually one or two in my mailbox by now. Then I realized I hadn't checked my mailbox in about a week.

D'oh!

And I was no longer bummed. I had hope. And a reason to get out of my car in the freezing weather ('It's a tit nipply out here') this morning at the risk of certain girly extremities catching a bit of frostbite. (I could have checked the mailbox Sunday night when we got home, but as soon as I parked the car in its little car spot I was in Sit On The Couch And Not Move For Several Hours mode. I didn't really sit on the couch for several hours without moving, but in that frame of mind there was no way I was going to brave the cold and put on shoes for a mailbox check. I live in an apartment and my mailbox isn't located nicely in front of my door. And I was all about ignoring all but the nicely last night.)

So I checked the snail-mail-box this morning and lo and behold I had mail! Tons of mail, most of it being of the junk variety. But there were a couple of xmas cards in there.

And I was loved!

That'll teach me to check my mailbox more often. :)

One of those cards was from one of my aussie buddies. :) :) At first I thought it was an xmas card from an aussie relative, but they usually just send one card to 'the family'. Then I opened it and saw it was from my friend. Yes, that's right, I'VE GOT FRIENDS! heh heh heh. So anyway, that was a nice surprise. :) :) Though she didn't include any return addy for me to reciprocate. :( I'll have to ask her for it later.

Another card was from my friend Zoink and included with it was my invitation to her xmas party this weekend. And what a spiffy invite it was too!! It made me feel all grown up and important like. :) I loved it Zoink. You're awesome chica!

You know what's so totally utterly wrong though? I had twice as many junk envelopes full of credit card application solicitations than I had Christmas cards. That just ain't right. Why do they keep sending me that crap? Sure, I don't mind a few of them here and there, but I had about twenty of them in my mailbox! That's like a whole acre of forest right there that was killed so those money grubbing mongrels could entice me into going more in debt than what I already am. Bastards.

Anywhoo...

Tonight's mission, should I choose to accept it or not: 1) buy gifts for xmas party and 2) show some xmas love by sending out xmas cards.

I love sending out xmas cards. That's soooooo much more enjoyable than paying bills. :)