Thankfully, The Bundle is Mailed

Hello Folks,

I mailed the bundles yesterday, about 5 minutes before the post office closed. It took me about all day to stuff them as I was without my Laurie and Ivan help and company. We've had a little cold, and cases of corona virus are going up, up, up so we had to shut the bundle-stuffing day down, down, down again. It's so desperately slow without them. My term as mailer will be up in a little more than a year, and I would recommend that whoever takes the job next be a person who knows a couple other members in the same town, or has a couple friends who will help every month. It's twice the fun and half the trouble. 

Trying to find our way through this season is making me focus more than ever on what we have, rather than what we don't have. We have our family, first, and while we are rather tired of each other at times, we are making it work. We go on a long hike every Friday, learning about trees and mushrooms and how to dress for the weather, and whether or not it makes sense for a 6 year old boy to pack a really long heavy rope and two pieces of scrap metal in his backpack. We don't have to wake up every morning at 6:30 am to walk the kids to school. And in fact, we can cancel school altogether when it's nice out. We put my great-grandma's old horsehair couch back together and put it in the upstairs of the garage next to my letterpress equipment, and my husband and I have coffee together there almost every morning. It's strange, but Grandma's Olde Couch Cafe has a pretty strict "no children" policy that is working well for half our family. Our children are not loners - they would live on me, possum-style, if it was available - so this is the only time of the day that they are not talking to me. My daughter, who is 8, doesn't really see the point of toys. She likes art, craft, and manual labor, but is otherwise asking questions like "who invented marriage?" and "but what IS escrow?" That's something no one knows, honey. It's just a word. 

Like "pood." Pood is a word. It's some ancient form of weight measurement. I found that out when I looked it up on the computer after reading it in John Carvalho's newest installation of A Martlet's Tales. I could not figure out what he meant by it, because I guess I thought he was immune from typos. So, while it is a word, it is not the right word. When I got his email, asking me to alert you all to this typo, I laughed pretty hard, and figured out for the 6000th time that I'm not very bright. Of course, pood should be GOOD, because GOOD is the opposite of BAD! I'm sure that you all would have figured that out.

I would love to know what you are thankful for right now. I am very thankful for the beautiful, thoughtful, inspiring work that keeps showing up in my mailbox. Keep it up, friends. It is a great feeling of connection in a lonely time. 

Your Mailer, Heather