Rebecca and two friends had their nails done as part of her Christmas present. The fumes in the nail place were so intense that I ran errands and didn’t come up until they called that they were done. Although the women who do the nail work wear surgical masks, I don’t know how they stand the stench and the eye-reddeningly strong vapors.

I spent the afternoon with a cup of tea and the Christmas cards I’m sending out this year. It’s sad that they’ve become a chore, rather than a pleasure, an item on my to-do list rather than a way to communicate with friends and family. I’ve cut the list way back in the past few years, so there aren’t actually that many to address. This year as I reviewed the address labels for changes (in address, spouse, name), I found there were several names I needed to remove because the recipient had died during the past year. One was my husband’s aunt who had lingered in ill health in a nursing home for a number of years. Another was a friend of my parent’s whom I had corresponded with for a long time. We had met Peg and her husband when we were camping in Canada when I was about 10. We visited them at their home in New Brunswick, and I remember her husband’s emphysema, how cruelly it limited his life. She and my parents kept in touch and, after they had both passed away, she wrote to both my sister and me on a regular basis. She knit sweaters for my daughters when they were babies and always sent a letter once or twice a year, chatty with stories about her travels and her own children and grandchildren. Although I could barely make out her handwriting the past few years, I’ll miss her words and the slender ribbon of connection she had with my parents.

I also found that, much the same as the New York Times, I prematurely removed the name of one of my husband’s friends, greatly exaggerating the rumors of his death, which has, in fact, not occurred.

My choice of cards this year was a set of four different folk art designs picked up at the bookstore. Cute, safe, non-offensive. The envelopes, however, were another story. They were embedded with some sort of faux-glue which took copious amounts of saliva and extreme pressure to cause to stick to the envelope. I had visions of George Costanza’s fiancé licking the cheap envelopes for their wedding invitations, and dying from the poisonous glue.

Every year when I write out the cards and print the labels, I think of my father’s Christmas card list. He kept it in a big red binder and had pages with the name of every recipient, their address, and a column for each year he sent them a card and whether he received one in return. Two years of no card and you were off the list, no exceptions. The list was handwritten at first, then mimeographed, then printed on his Apple II computer. Even when arthritis had swollen and bent his hands, he signed and addressed each card himself.