Freedom and Christmas Cards

I'm free, to do what I want, any old time... Imagine Mick Jagger, not me, singing it; it'll sound better.

It doesn't feel quite as good as I would like, probably because I will keep going in to lab to finish a few things up, but NOT full time. Yesterday, my first day of freedom, I didn't go in to lab at all. Instead, I got started on my Christmas cards. I used to be really good about sending out cards every year, but not since graduate school and marriage. Of course there is the whole thing with graduate school taking up so much of my time and energy. And what the stress of it does to my efficiency. I also think marriage had a lot to do with my poor record with Christmas cards these last 6 years of marriage and science. First of all, the number of cards increased. That first year, I was gathering addresses from Tim for some of his relatives that I had met, thinking that it would be no big deal to add 5-10 cards to my list. Tim, who didn't send out Christmas cards, thought it was great and started adding some of his friends to the list as well. He was really good as adding names, but not as good at adding addresses, so then there was this big address gathering event before the cards were done. Each year, there have been more of his friends added, as well as new friends of ours that we have met, so the job keeps growing. The other thing about marriage that made the Christmas cards a more formidable task is The Christmas Letter. Now that there are two of us, there is more news each year, and it made sense to include this update with the cards. The first year, we needed to explain our wedding/marriage and describe the new unknown member of our union to the recipients. We married 9 months after we met and only invited immediate family to the tiny ceremony on a mountain. We just slipped it in the same week I started grad school. There were people in our lives who didn't know any of this until they received the announcement in the mail after we married, instead of the invitation beforehand that they would have received if we had a normal wedding. It was important to let them know that they were not individually excluded, but that we didn't invite anyone. We also had the move to Washington for me to attend graduate school. It all makes sense, but it made the Christmas card task even greater. Well, I started sending cards out late, and some years I just never got them all finished. Tim started helping by stuffing and signing the ones for his friends. Last year I was really overwhelmed, so Tim wrote The Letter. It was great, by the way. He has a great sense of humor. This year, once again, we have much to tell, and I really want to get them sent out, but I just started yesterday and we leave for Pennsylvania on Friday. I really hope to get back to my old ways of organization and completion!