Well, here we are on December 2nd, exactly 56 days since my last post was visited upon the unsuspecting public on October 7th. But in my defense, I was busy.
Back in the Mists of Time, thousands of seconds ago, the principal scientist (aka me) in the “What In the Hell Was I Thinking” division of the Lateral Thinking Department, hit upon the notion to do something novel related to the impending 20th wedding anniversary of me and my wife, Jeanette, on November 27th.
Unbidden, the mental image of the impressively large mound of cards that Jeanette and I have exchanged/accumulated over the years suddenly popped into my head.
You know the cards I’m talking about:
Christmas cards, Valentine’s Day cards, “Have You Seen My Glasses Lately? And Also My Pronouns?” cards, Easter cards, Mother’s Day cards, Father’s Day cards, “I Just Got Out of Jail Today” cards, “I Wish You Wouldn’t Splash Water On Your Side Of The Bathroom Mirror Even Though We Now Have Two Sinks Since We Finished The Reno” cards, “Just Because I Love You But Having Said That, I Still Need To Point Out That I Wish You Would Quit Squirreling My Stuff Away In Places That Don’t Make Any Sense To Me” cards, Run-on Sentence Day cards, “Why Are You Even In The Kitchen Anyway?” cards, “Honey, Why Don’t You Go Hang Out With Your Geezer Friends From High School For The Weekend?” cards, and last but not least: “I Hate It When You Remind Me That I Might Be A Tad Tetchy Because There’s A Full Moon Tonight” cards.
We’re talking about hundreds of cards here, just so we’re on the same page.
Now where was I? Yeah! Back to the Mists of Time. On that same day, thousands of seconds ago, after the cards popped into my head, I got the idea to make montages by taping together same-themed cards out of our hoard. For good measure, I also decided to throw in some montages composed of photos and memorabilia from various trips we’ve taken over the years.
Let’s face it: we can’t have enough sentimental montages: or enough Art Critics, for that matter, if we’re really honest with ourselves.
Before we get into these montages, I should note that we initially got married October 22nd, in front of a Justice of the Peace, because we thought it would speed up Jeanette’s immigration stuff. About a month later we got married again, together with family, in front of a pastor at Jeanette’s sister’s house. When people ask me why we got married twice in the space of a month I always say it was just to lock things down a little tighter. These days you can’t be too sure.
Anyway, here’s us:
And here are some of the montages. The one immediately below was Stop #1. These things were all over the place, scattered in various rooms, stuck on walls, doors, mirrors, an ironing board, and a ladder. They were hanging off the telescoping pole I use to diddle with the outdoor Christmas lights and one was hanging off a curtain rod.
Not shown at the bottom of the Stop #1 display were flowers, champagne in a bucket of ice and a lit candle with our wedding invitation on the side of it, courtesy of Freda (my Mom). I swear on the Hallmark Christmas Movie franchise that I’m not making any of this up.
Alert readers will note that sometimes we sent the same cards to each other.
Alert readers will wonder why the Mother’s Day/Father’s Day montage (at right) is circular.
I couldn’t think of a different shape.
Alert readers will probably already have reached that conclusion.
They also probably noticed at least one pair of duplicate cards.
Observe the card up there at the North Pole of the egg.
You can’t see the inside of the card so I’ll show you:
This next one was living on the Valentine’s Day montage down in the lower left edge of the heart, just in case you were wondering:
Once again, I’ll satisfy your curiosity about what was written inside:
I feel like I want to meet the people that write these things. Seems like maybe the people who wrote these two cards in particular went to the same School For Greeting Card Writers. Or maybe it was the same person. You never know.
Moving right along, here’s a brace of cruise/beach resort montages:
Here’s another card montage. I promise not to show any more of them.
The other one was supposed to be a tiered birthday cake (sans candles.)
Don’t judge. I feel like I should get at least a B+ for effort. Maybe an A.
It took me 18 rolls of Scotch tape and somewhere between 80 and 100 hours of work to:
a) find the cards in their various repositories
b) sort them and try to date them
c) tape them together so that as the montages rolled off the assembly line, they could accordion-fold and live in the rear storage compartment of my Tesla, underneath the inflatable paddleboards, safe from discovery.
Basically, Jeanette had no clue what I was up to for the better part of two months but on several occasions along the way she noted that I seemed distracted and agitated at times.
Ya think so, honey? I never thought I would get done in time. But I did.
: )
And now you know why I missed the November LTD post.
Finally, to close off the topic of greeting cards, I’m reprinting this little ditty, from “What Da Heck?” an LTD post that ran a couple of years ago. That ditty, in turn, was taken from a post written back in the Emedics days:
The School For Greeting Card Writers
Here at The School for Greeting Card Writers, things are looking pretty solemn.
We regret that though we’ve wracked our brains, we couldn’t come up with a column.
SQUIDS, newts, warthogs, SPAM; our topics are diverse.
But tonight our heads are empty; every hour it grows worse.
At first we thought we’d talk of pigs, but that proved way too boaring.
Before we’d written twenty lines we both were soundly snoring.
“Humanitarianism for beginners” seemed like a hopeful topic,
But we couldn’t think of much to say; we were feeling misanthropic.
Week in, week out, it ain’t no picnic, writing this stuff for free,
And we know that no one’s counting posts, but this is number forty-three*.
Some of you don’t get our jokes and this we are aware of.
But it doesn’t really bother us because we are a pair of:
Rugged individualists, trying to mimic Ogden Nash,
The only difference being, he traded words for cash.
Now we’re feeling really tired; we have to wrap this up.
So Merry Christmas, don’t pig out or else you will throw up.
(*It was actually post number forty-four but that didn’t rhyme.)
And just FYI, I was kidding about us needing more Art Critics.
The Department of Lateral Thinking 
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