TuttleTree.com

You may be asking yourself, if your self is part of my extended family, which we exchange ornaments instead of more expensive Christmas gifts, "Self: Why haven't I received a Christmas Card and Ornament from Adam and Megan?" Well, self erm, you. That, you can blame on the United States Postal Service. You see, they were mailed. Well before Christmas. We painstakingly hand signed and addressed every card and envelope (I know… itty bitty pity party… but when you know how to use a Mail Merge, why wouldn't you? (Answer: Wife won't let you.)) and stuffed the applicable ornaments into the applicable envelopes and applied a bevy of 41-cent stamps: one for each envelope. Then, instead of dropping them in a mailbox somewhere, Megan took them to the post office to ask a professional mail clerk (they go to school and get certified, right?) if any additional postage was necessary — which she was assured wasn't. They were mailed, and a couple of days later we received a bundle of them (though oddly, not all) in our mailbox wrapped neatly with a rubber band and each with an ugly sticker or hand-written note indicating that 17 cents additional postage was required presumably due to the extra quarter-inch of girth each held from being stuffed with an ornament. Disgusted with the lies of the professional postal clerk, Megan took them back to the post office, explained the situation to another professional mail clerk, and affixed an additional 10-cent, 5-cent, and 2-cent stamp to each before having the clerk send them off to their destinations. Again, days later, a couple of them came back because, presumably, the second professional mail clerk failed to clearly mark that the additional postage had indeed been paid, and (or possibly "or") someone saw the sticker/handwriting indicating that additional postage was needed but didn't check thoroughly enough for the "ok" written next to it, and decided that sending it back to us a second time would be cheaper than just sending it on its way. (Note to self regarding scheme to destroy the US Postal Service by way of drained budget: Send lots of letters with insufficient postage over and over again without affixing additional postage until, inevitably, they can no longer afford to buy gas to bring the letters back to me.) I knew we should have just elf'd ourselves and called it a day. Next year you're all just getting e-cards.