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Everyone celebrates Jenmas Eve differently.*I* like to go to Hot Plate SANS Jen to eat a Mexican Omelet surrounded by a gallery of paint-by-number masterpieces.

YEARS AGO, Jen (carefully) slaved away over *her* masterpiece and it sits atop a shelf of knick-knacks in Cape Cod. 

She was so dedicated! 

I bet she knew that someday I’d repay her in birthday cards.

The Art Licensor (RSVP) asked us for some birthday cards and because I love to work/need money, I made nine. I won’t bore you with the details/need to get back to listening to my new podcast (My Favorite Murder).

Here are a few… Will they choose any???

Stay tuned.

Thank you, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. I can’t wait until Alexis Stewart and I meet you in person!

“What street is this??” I yelled up to the boy watching us float past him. He told me that we were just about to enter the Ninth Circle of Hell.

PHEW! Almost done!

Three hours to travel 2.5 miles… Could we have walked faster than the creek carried us? Oh, THAT’S the point my kids were making when they got out of their tubes and dragged them the last four blocks! Oh, kids! So subtle!

I didn’t get a photograph of them on our adventure, BUT a giant spider landed on my belly! AND who needs a picture of all three when one of them modeled for the company that made our tubes?

(Grip those handles! Safety first, Dylan!)

I only thought the creek-pollution caused blindness one time and I only lost my sunglasses one time — I’d call that a win!

Here’s a card, maybe inspired by laughter-induced bladder incontinence. MAYBE NOT.

My life is one big Sexy Action Thriller. And being a bouncer at the Double Deuce in Missouri when I was only ten years old was pretty intense. Sure, I had great hair and sure I had a winning smile, and sure I always made breaking up bar fights and drinking black coffee look sexy. That’s just who I am.

Truth is, practicing tai chi in your brother’s sweatpants and running a letterpress design studio with cards SOLD AROUND THE WORLD, takes discipline and dedication.

Live Wires, our New Zealand distributor, knows this and sent us a token of appreciation.

I think they’re supposed to be for tea but I already used mine for sopping up blood from a letterpress-related (packing tape dispenser) injury. Thanks Helen Harvey!

After I bandaged my wound, I made this:

My little sister had baby #2 last week, she gave birth at home but, strangely, didn’t ask me to participate.

Despite my lack of presence, the birth went off without a hitch because anyone can boil water and get towels. (SORRY MOM.)

I will give her this card the next time I break in to her house:

ALSO, I made this because I am so into politics:So, you don’t need to watch the news tonight. You’re welcome.

Dinah told me about her crazy dream!

She said we left her for two weeks with Tib and Jen so we could go to Cape Cod, and she had a fever and hair-balls. She said it was actually more like a nightmare — poor thing!

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her nightmare was real… that we did leave her for two weeks with Tib and Jen.

But she isn’t alone. When she reads the blog, she’ll find out about our scary flight home. The airline warned us, but people just do whatever they want.The other passengers made calls on their flip-phones, watched who-knows-what on portable televisions, drove their remote-controlled cars up and down the aisle, talked to each other on walkie-talkies, and blasted music on transistor radios! Meanwhile we, The Law-Abiding, were stuck in the teeny-tiny bathroom, forced to take hysterical selfies.BUT, we managed to land safely, no thanks to all of that recklessness. I will NOT be giving them my latest Thank You Card.

Cape Cod 2016 is (so far) drama AND cage-free. Wait, we did lose one member of the party searching for the water shut-off valve in the cellar.

He was brave and will be missed.

More importantly, we never found that shut-off valve! One life wasted.

But we must carry on, he would have wanted it that way.The very next day was filled with so much splashing and laughter and sunscreen, I’m sure Ben was looking down on us and giggling! Oh, how he’d giggle!AND here’s a little thing from The Boston Globe about Millennials’ loving PAPER greeting cards. DUH.

This isn’t the first time I blamed The Cats for a crime they didn’t commit.

Nor will it be the last. The odor of rotten animal is unforgettable and like the odor of rotting potato, it is embedded in the brain. But sometimes the brain jumbles the smell of decomposing rodent with the smell of a blanket of maggots coating the bottom of the garbage can.

And that is where my story begins…

The Summer Breeze gently wafted through the upstairs windows. It was pleasant, until an occasional repulsive odor stung my nostrils. I blamed The Cats for hunting, killing, and hiding their prey somewhere on my second floor.

But a search for a body was in vain and a garbage can investigation led me to the real suspect: that damn blanket of maggots coating the bottom of the garbage can!

Mea culpa, Tib!  When will I ever trust you again??

Speaking of breezes (and puns??)… Here’s a new thank you/congratulations card.

Jen’s in Austria because she loves gazebos.The Intern (Madge) is in Italy because she loves dreamy landscapes.And I am here because I love the smell of flooded basements. Is that asbestos tile??

Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. See how we just throw caution to the wind over here?? I almost forgot what the floor looked like under 1,000 lbs of soaked carpet! And that was my lesson about not taking things for granted.

Between all that lesson-learnin’, I made a new card.Don’t hurry home guys!

Tib knows it’s summer because the screens are on.

And *I* know it’s summer for other, more important, reasons.But I’m trying to be a better person/less into body-sculpting, so I decided to read a book. It was written by The Intern’s daughter, Nora McInerny Purmot.Chapter 25 was especially fun to read because Madge is so near and dear to my heart and I could relate to the notion of elder-abuse.Except my mom has made it very clear that she wants to be euthanized via pillow-suffocation, pre-elder-abuse.

Oh, mom!