The longer the move takes, the less time devoted to pretty much ANYTHING else

(oops, wrote this one and forgot to post - so a late post - meaning, I actually sent my Christmas cards before the 23rd!)

The move keeps dragging. Originally we were going to get in the first weekend we had the place (that’s when the movers dropped off most of our stuff). Then we needed another week because of all the unplanned painting to be done. Then just one more – as painting takes a lot longer than we thought… And the longer the move takes, the less I do anything else. I took the munchkin for Christmas pictures very early so that I could have the cards all ready to go to send with our new address before we started receiving cards (and so they wouldn’t get lost in the move). Admittedly I was slow about printing out labels and all that, but when I finally was ready to go on them, I found I had no energy to write much of anything on them!

This has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine… I know I’m going to get flack for this, but hear me out. I get Christmas cards from college friends who I haven’t seen in years and they just sign their names – no updates on family or life, no photocopied Christmas note. As we’ve gotten older and everyone starts to have kids, they include a picture – so that’s kind of an update in itself. Although then the card is pre-signed, so they just stuff it in an envelope (with an address label) and send it off – feels like we could do that by email.

I know I’m being picky and petty. I actually really enjoy getting the Christmas pictures of my friends’ kids. It just starts to feel a little impersonal, I guess.

I mentioned this a few years ago to one of my friends – who does always write a note – and she said I’d see how much harder it is when I had kids (it’s her answer to a lot of things I say…). But now, with the move, I am ready to just shove these babies in envelopes – with my pre-printed labels, and printed new return address labels (just hoping they notice that it says we’ve moved!). I feel like I complained a bit too much about that in the past – and it does still feel too impersonal (if I like you enough to send you a Christmas card, I feel like I should say hi on it…), so I put a brief note on most of them. (To be fair, my husband’s relatives and college friends who I don’t know so well and my distant second cousins, etc. … did not get notes!) However my sentiments got shorter and shorter as I thought about my move to do list! Good friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time got a simple “Miss you! Hope to see you at the holidays!”

Great. I’ve totally turned into the thing I used to mock! I’m going to do my best to blame it on the move rather than the babe. We’ll see how that works for me … next year… (I’m sure they’ll be something new to blame it on then!)