Christmas Flotsam

I know this isn't a new lament, but it's a true one: What is to be done with all of the Christmas cards received every year?

I just threw out the cards I received at work into my little trash bin beside my desk. I only had three here, and you would think that I wouldn't be terribly concerned about cards from suppliers and uppity-ups, but it kind of made me sad just now when I threw a dirty tissue into the bin and it landed on top of the cards. It also kind of makes me feel heartless. These people went to all the trouble of sending me a card, picking out a tasteful card that can in no way be construed as offensive by anyone, and writing my name in it. Oh, and writing their names at the bottom. Mind you, one supplier did also give me a great gift basket full of chocolate goodies (that now must be gotten rid of in post-holiday recovery efforts), and their card is hand-signed, and they came to my office and personally wished me happy holidays. (You might think that I should feel badly about accepting gifts from a supplier, but I have no purchasing power, and they know that, so it's all good.)

So what do you do with old cards? I could just keep them all, but then what? Where? What for? I could throw them all out, but that feels a bit heartless. I could make a scrapbook page out of them, but really, I won't ever get to it, and they'll sit in a drawer forever until I throw them out five years from now or so.

That did just give me an idea, though. I could make a digital scrapbook page out of them, I suppose. I could scan both the inside and the outside, so I get to keep and see the sentiments and the cards. Hm. I think I like this idea. We'll see, though. I might just push through the guilt and scrap the cards in an entirely different way.

As for putting Christmas away, I started last night, and less than half the ornaments have been taken off the tree, including the angel. So now I have a tree of Depressitude sitting in my living room. It's just sad, with its branches half bare and its garlands draping off onto the floor. I really have to finish all that tonight. If I can resist sitting down with my reborn baby shawl and another few episodes of season one Veronica Mars.

Oh, that's right. That blanket that I went on about how beautiful it was, and how much I enjoyed knitting it? Yeah. I frogged it the other night, right back into a big, snowy, tangly pile of soft, white yarn. I'd made a mistake way back, that I thought I could live with, but then when I found that I'd made another mistake last week when I was trying to knit while playing Scene It, it was too much and it had to go. Ribbit. The good news is that so far so good - no new mistakes yet, and I'm about 30 rows in. A long way to go, yet.

For now, I'm just going to sit here, trying to stay awake and active and not smack my forehead on the keyboard before the coffee kicks in.