Cards
Do you ever get a sort of sudden need to go lay down and take a nap? Like suddenly your legs are wobbly and your limb response is laggy? This happened again on Sunday and--what, no? Never? Oh. Okay, then. I guess it's just me... Moving on...
This weekend, I bought scrumptious cheese and ate delicious cheesy pizza at The Cheese Board in Berkeley with Alex, Nataliya, Alex's mother, Neil, Nami, and Neil's parents. It was a good time :D We also hit up Berkeley Bowl West (a grocery store with above-average produce selections) on the way back, as is our custom (or at least is the custom when I go to Berkeley with Alex & Nataliya). Outside of that, I had a foray to Costco to get gas and refill my work candy bucket (which was down to a piddling few candies sitting gloomily in the bottom when I returned from holiday), and took a walk over to Target for binder rings and a single paper punch (because my 3-hole puncher doesn't punch cardboard, apparently. That's what it's called, right? Why does the phrase "3-hole puncher" sound odd all of a sudden o_0). I actually already had a single hole punch, but it punches 1/16th inch holes :/ Oh ridiculous specialty hole punch, one day I'll make good use of you...
So why did I need to punch holes in cardboard? Or binder rings? I saw this post and felt a need to give it a go. See, here's a not-so-secret secret--I keep cards. I've more or less kept all my cards since gaining my own address. And several notes, and often with their respective envelopes (except ones that got a bit mangled in the post, usually, although I do mysteriously lose envelopes from time to time). But they all get chucked into a box, you see, which is not the greatest of storage methods and doesn't really lead to me looking them over again.
A book-ish thing seems like a really great idea :D But one for every year? I don't actually get that many cards or notes in a year (particularly now that my grandmother has passed on and my aunt & uncle, the only other card-sending relatives, are waging war upon my parents for having asked to see an accounting of how grandma's trust has been handled), and worse, not all the cards I've kept can be traced to a particular year. They're roughly stored in chronological order, but only very roughly. Ones with postal date stamps are helpful, but not all of them have stamped envelopes (or envelopes with writing on 'em, since it's hard to wonder who a card is meant for when they're handed to you in person with a verbal greeting). Also, by dear departed grandmother (and aunt) were pretty keen on sending cards for a lot of random holidays (Easter cards? St. Patrick's Day?), so I've made a separate book for Christmas cards and another as a catch-all for... everything else during the year (probably including wedding invitations--yes, I'm that much of a pack rat).
There's no cardboard in the one linked! Well, yes, I decided to go the hardcover route (it is more durable!) and cut out some sizable rectangles of cardboard (fits all but the widest of notes so far) and glued some festive paper on it (wrapping paper scraps). Two thinner cardstock dividers were fashioned out of old/used holiday wrapping paper and a used mailing envelope for the Christmas book-thing, which is the only one I've actually finished--one for "2011" and one for "2010 & Earlier." Perhaps I'll have to post a picture at some point, it's very scrappy-looking, but it serves its purpose well. Since I like envelopes, I'm actually cutting out the fronts of the envelopes I have and punching holes in those, too, and putting them before their respective cards, because I think that's cute. (And it helps keep the card-to-card spread of glitter to a minimum--it's like a sparkly, cheerful, holiday card plague! That lady who wrote the Star Wars craft book was spot-on when she jokingly called glitter "the herpes of craft," because you'll never be rid of it once you've got it.) Trimming out the fronts of the envelopes has given me interesting and fun insight into the spacing habits of my friends and family, and how much room they give themselves between their letters and the edges of the envelopes. So far, dreamshade totally wins the "Margin? What's a margin?" award :P
I'm doing the same things for the Other Cards book-thing, except I used non-Christmas wrapping paper on the covers and some bigger-than-normal cards-from-charity that I scrounged up as the dividers (cut in half and turned blank side forward, with my scrawl on the blank side proclaiming the time period of the cards to follow). I'm still in the process of punching holes in the cards for the Other Cards book. Once I finish, I think this might actually be one less box-o-stuff :o That's kind of exciting! It's easy work that can be done while watching TV (or Claymore, to be specific... so far mildly interesting, if a bit predictable, but I'm only a couple of episodes in), so it should be done soon. Had I not passed out for a few hours on Sunday, it might even have gotten done last night :/
The downer in all this is actually going through and reading the cards from my grandmother in reverse chronological order and reading the occasional "I'd like to hear from you" notes in some. It's not that I didn't write her (although I definitely did not write/call nearly enough), but her memory seemed to cause her to forget that friends and family had recently called or that a card was recently received as opposed to being something from the past. I rather hope she didn't actually live in the imaginary state of isolation that she seemed to live in, and that she realized that she was loved and that it was her memory that made the calls and cards seem so few and far between, but there's no way to know now. It's also disturbing to see the changes to her handwriting and signature. The later cards contained a wobbly name with "grandma" quickly appended to it as though she had had to be reminded (likely by my aunt) that this was for her granddaughter, where the earlier ones had a confident, flowing script that simply proclaimed "grandma" without her name (grandma on the other side can't write or speak English, so there was no chance of confusion).
The notes from my aunt are consistently... complaint-filled. It's probably not intentional, but it's also a bit amusing. There's a year where she apparently sent the exact same "sorry we missed your birthday" card twice (in two different colors of envelope, no less), and complained about the same things in both cards :P She's not a biological relation of mine, but perhaps this is a family trait that transcends genetics ^^;;
Sometimes it's kind of sad to read cards from people I've lost touch with, as well, but it can also be kind of pleasant to read the little memories tucked into each. There were a few that took me a while to remember who, exactly, it was that had sent me the note (much harder on the ones without an envelope if the issue was reading the signature), but they brought people back to mind, which is probably a good exercise. What the cards really do, however, is speak to the fact that I really should be writing more letters to people. How to accomplish this remains unaddressed, but hopefully I'll work it out and try to reconnect with some folks I don't hear from terribly often. And perhaps use up one of the giant boxes of charity cards taking up space in my bedroom before more come in -_-
This weekend, I bought scrumptious cheese and ate delicious cheesy pizza at The Cheese Board in Berkeley with Alex, Nataliya, Alex's mother, Neil, Nami, and Neil's parents. It was a good time :D We also hit up Berkeley Bowl West (a grocery store with above-average produce selections) on the way back, as is our custom (or at least is the custom when I go to Berkeley with Alex & Nataliya). Outside of that, I had a foray to Costco to get gas and refill my work candy bucket (which was down to a piddling few candies sitting gloomily in the bottom when I returned from holiday), and took a walk over to Target for binder rings and a single paper punch (because my 3-hole puncher doesn't punch cardboard, apparently. That's what it's called, right? Why does the phrase "3-hole puncher" sound odd all of a sudden o_0). I actually already had a single hole punch, but it punches 1/16th inch holes :/ Oh ridiculous specialty hole punch, one day I'll make good use of you...
So why did I need to punch holes in cardboard? Or binder rings? I saw this post and felt a need to give it a go. See, here's a not-so-secret secret--I keep cards. I've more or less kept all my cards since gaining my own address. And several notes, and often with their respective envelopes (except ones that got a bit mangled in the post, usually, although I do mysteriously lose envelopes from time to time). But they all get chucked into a box, you see, which is not the greatest of storage methods and doesn't really lead to me looking them over again.
A book-ish thing seems like a really great idea :D But one for every year? I don't actually get that many cards or notes in a year (particularly now that my grandmother has passed on and my aunt & uncle, the only other card-sending relatives, are waging war upon my parents for having asked to see an accounting of how grandma's trust has been handled), and worse, not all the cards I've kept can be traced to a particular year. They're roughly stored in chronological order, but only very roughly. Ones with postal date stamps are helpful, but not all of them have stamped envelopes (or envelopes with writing on 'em, since it's hard to wonder who a card is meant for when they're handed to you in person with a verbal greeting). Also, by dear departed grandmother (and aunt) were pretty keen on sending cards for a lot of random holidays (Easter cards? St. Patrick's Day?), so I've made a separate book for Christmas cards and another as a catch-all for... everything else during the year (probably including wedding invitations--yes, I'm that much of a pack rat).
There's no cardboard in the one linked! Well, yes, I decided to go the hardcover route (it is more durable!) and cut out some sizable rectangles of cardboard (fits all but the widest of notes so far) and glued some festive paper on it (wrapping paper scraps). Two thinner cardstock dividers were fashioned out of old/used holiday wrapping paper and a used mailing envelope for the Christmas book-thing, which is the only one I've actually finished--one for "2011" and one for "2010 & Earlier." Perhaps I'll have to post a picture at some point, it's very scrappy-looking, but it serves its purpose well. Since I like envelopes, I'm actually cutting out the fronts of the envelopes I have and punching holes in those, too, and putting them before their respective cards, because I think that's cute. (And it helps keep the card-to-card spread of glitter to a minimum--it's like a sparkly, cheerful, holiday card plague! That lady who wrote the Star Wars craft book was spot-on when she jokingly called glitter "the herpes of craft," because you'll never be rid of it once you've got it.) Trimming out the fronts of the envelopes has given me interesting and fun insight into the spacing habits of my friends and family, and how much room they give themselves between their letters and the edges of the envelopes. So far, dreamshade totally wins the "Margin? What's a margin?" award :P
I'm doing the same things for the Other Cards book-thing, except I used non-Christmas wrapping paper on the covers and some bigger-than-normal cards-from-charity that I scrounged up as the dividers (cut in half and turned blank side forward, with my scrawl on the blank side proclaiming the time period of the cards to follow). I'm still in the process of punching holes in the cards for the Other Cards book. Once I finish, I think this might actually be one less box-o-stuff :o That's kind of exciting! It's easy work that can be done while watching TV (or Claymore, to be specific... so far mildly interesting, if a bit predictable, but I'm only a couple of episodes in), so it should be done soon. Had I not passed out for a few hours on Sunday, it might even have gotten done last night :/
The downer in all this is actually going through and reading the cards from my grandmother in reverse chronological order and reading the occasional "I'd like to hear from you" notes in some. It's not that I didn't write her (although I definitely did not write/call nearly enough), but her memory seemed to cause her to forget that friends and family had recently called or that a card was recently received as opposed to being something from the past. I rather hope she didn't actually live in the imaginary state of isolation that she seemed to live in, and that she realized that she was loved and that it was her memory that made the calls and cards seem so few and far between, but there's no way to know now. It's also disturbing to see the changes to her handwriting and signature. The later cards contained a wobbly name with "grandma" quickly appended to it as though she had had to be reminded (likely by my aunt) that this was for her granddaughter, where the earlier ones had a confident, flowing script that simply proclaimed "grandma" without her name (grandma on the other side can't write or speak English, so there was no chance of confusion).
The notes from my aunt are consistently... complaint-filled. It's probably not intentional, but it's also a bit amusing. There's a year where she apparently sent the exact same "sorry we missed your birthday" card twice (in two different colors of envelope, no less), and complained about the same things in both cards :P She's not a biological relation of mine, but perhaps this is a family trait that transcends genetics ^^;;
Sometimes it's kind of sad to read cards from people I've lost touch with, as well, but it can also be kind of pleasant to read the little memories tucked into each. There were a few that took me a while to remember who, exactly, it was that had sent me the note (much harder on the ones without an envelope if the issue was reading the signature), but they brought people back to mind, which is probably a good exercise. What the cards really do, however, is speak to the fact that I really should be writing more letters to people. How to accomplish this remains unaddressed, but hopefully I'll work it out and try to reconnect with some folks I don't hear from terribly often. And perhaps use up one of the giant boxes of charity cards taking up space in my bedroom before more come in -_-