Lauren’s Beans

So I’m writing christmas cards again.  I’ve always liked christmas cards.  At our house they go up to decorate the room around christmas time.  It’s one of the only times of year where your mail is more actual letters than bills and junk mail. Receiving them is fun, writing them less so worst of all though is the addresses.  Writing the note isn’t so hard but, finding the address is a chore.  Last year my purse was stolen with my address book in it, the address book that I had made specifically because I had had trouble with addresses the year before.  So I’m doing the whole thing over again, and it makes the whole deciding who to write christmas cards to an interesting process.  Because there end up being two different types of people among even your close friends and family …. the christmas card people, as in the ones you know their physical address, and the non christmas card people, the ones you have only electrical addresses.  Often the groups are exclusive one from the other.  The ones with the physical addresses don’t have electrical ones or vice versa at least as far as your world goes.  I think I fit into the non christmas card people for mostly because so far my email address has remained more constant than my physical one.  The problem for me though is that I find myself more capable of writing a letter than doing alot of other things (like calling for instance).  Christmas cards are in a way ideal for me… they say hey I still care to make sure I know where you are and to let you know where in the world I am so that if it so happens that you pass by my way you’ll know you’re doing it…. but it isn’t really necessary to say much.  Ideal since I am often socially constipated in any other type of communication besides physical presence.  This year somehow it seems almost more important because we are leaving italy.  Because I have to collect the addresses that are important to  me in italy and also because writing the christmas cards I’m telling people that I’ll be back on the same continent again so it feels like the physical address is more important again.