Christmas card compulsions

Last night while visiting O and E, I crammed all the kids on the couch and took some photos for this year's Christmas cards.  Not as nice as outdoor pics would have been, but this year we'll take what we can get.

So, now it's time to do the actual cards.  In most aspects of my life I am generally unorganized and untidy.  But I do have anal retentive tendencies in a few specific areas.  In what is perhaps my longest-lived such tendency, I have been keeping track of Xmas cards that I have sent and received since 1998. That's 22 years of fastidious, fairly useless record-keeping.

I use my trusty graph paper to keep track of my cards.  I'm not sure I could live without graph paper.  Christmas card lists?  Graph paper.  Seed germination charts?  Graph paper.  Online meeting minutes?  Graph paper.  (Note the one thing that I don't use graph paper for -- drawing graphs.)  Last night Hubby and I went through the Xmas gifts that we've bought for the boys.  I eagerly reached for my trusty graph paper and began constructing a list.  Hubby looked at me weird and handed me his IPad, with a spreadsheet he had already started.  Reluctantly I took the IPad.  But I didn't like it.

Not only do I keep track of whom I send cards to, but also what cards I send.  I don't want to send the same card to the same person two years in a row.  Sure, I'll wear the same pair of lounge pants all week, and I haven't changed my phone's wallpaper since I got it, but I won't send the same Christmas card twice.  Go figure. 

Since the beginning of my holiday card career, I've kept one copy of each of the cards that I've bought.  The pictures are so pretty, I'm loathe to give them all away.  I'm fairly fussy about my cards, choosing the art and the inside messages with care.  I'm particular to winter folk art scenes.  And trees.  And shiny stuff.  Not too much glitter, maybe just enough to give a sparkle.  One day I'll get a frame and put all the pretty cards inside and hang it on my wall.  Some day.

If someone goes three years without sending me a card, they get nixed on my list.  I'm not a fan of sending cards out to folks who don't bother sending one to me.  Surely I'm worth a few minutes of time and a 55 cent stamp to someone?  And if not, why should I spend the same on them?  Exceptions are made for parents and siblings, and a few others.  Grudgingly.

Yeah, I'm a heartless bastard.  But one with exquisite Christmas card taste.