You know you want a unicorn postcard...

Tonight is the last night to sign up for the fabulous Unicorn postcard swap on Swap-bot. I don't know why only 5 people are signed up for it (I'm one of them!!) so I just thought I'd give it a shout-out here for any of my readers who are also swap-bot users... who see this in time to sign up... who also want a unicorn postcard...

* sigh *

Maybe I missed the boat on this. I just happen to have a slew of unicorn postcards on hand... tra la la.

On another note, we started with a new cleaning lady today. (Yes, for the first time our lives, my husband and I have hired a cleaning lady, because we are so damn busy that we can't even see each other at the same time, let alone clean the house...) She re-organized as well as cleaned. SHE REORGANIZED MY LETTER PILES. I am really freaking out about that. It is a serious problem and I'm going to have to re-sort them all.

It has been a totally strange day. And I am in a totally strange place in my life.

Is there something weird going on in the stars? Astrologically? Oy.

Statistics and The Pile

Enough pen pals have been asking that I bit the bullet and counted the letters in my needs response pile. The tally today, before receiving Thursday mail, is as follows:
98 letters
25 postcards

So there we have it. It seems insurmountable, but it's not about the tally, it's about the letter-writing experience.

That being said, a lot of pen pals and blog readers say they like my outgoing stats, and so far no one has offered any negative feedback about them. Some of my fellow mail bloggers also post incoming stats. What do you think? Should I do that? I have felt hesitant to do so because I don't want to be bragging about the amount of mail I receive - it is really quite a lot - but some folks are curious, and it might hold off those that start saying "why haven't you written me back yet??" two weeks after they sent their letter or postcard. (I have averaged my stats, unscientifically, and the mean average turnaround time for a response to a new letter or postcard - meaning someone who has never written me before - is about 3 months.)

Feedback welcome and requested!

Soda guards my mail

After I sort the day's mail (my beloved does get some mail, occasionally), my personal letters usually sit in a wee pile until I sit down and read them in one fell swoop. Soda often beats me to it - she knows a lot of my attention goes to mail - and sits upon them, so that I must pet her sufficiently before she will relinquish them.



I know I'm being a little indulgent, posting 4 photos of her settled on this one day's mail pile...



...but hey, I think she's really cute.

March Madness goal reached!

Remember my little March Madness goal to write 100 pieces of mail by April? I just did it! The 100th piece is freshly completed and addressed.

I'm thrilled to have reached my goal in less than 5 weeks - almost a whole week early by the April 1 deadline - and I'm going to go ahead and track the stats until April 1 just for the heck of it. Just for posterity's sake, the stats as of this moment are 63 letters and 37 postcards.

Just had to share the fun news!

(Don't ask me to count the items in my letter pile, though, OK? Because I've probably received just as many as I've written this month...)

Updating the table

Remember how I said I decided it would be really tedious to post about what I've written every single day of my March Madness challenge, and instead am keeping the totals in a little table on my lefthand sidebar so we can all track my progress? It is actually really satisfying to update said table every time I write a letter or a postcard. Weird. But I'm going to admit that I'm pretty proud of myself, after such a dry spell, for writing 18 pieces of mail since Monday.

March Madness: a back-to-writing goal (100 by April 1)

You may have noticed that my blogging, and my letter-writing output, has been way down lately. This is partly because I've been super-busy (I always am, in January and February) and because I've been rather down myself. But there is a light at the end of the tunnel, my life gets a lot more manageable in March, and I am really looking forward to digging back into letters again.

I will confess that there are well over 100 items in my needs-response pile, a combination of letters and postcards and even a few little packages. I must remedy this!

I know I'm not going to catch up completely and immediately, but I decided I would set a goal for myself, and share it with you to keep me on task. At first I thought I wanted to write 100 items of mail (postcards count, along with letters!) in March... but I'll be away for a few days in there, and I wondered if that was really do-able. But I had some unexpected free time on Tuesday this week, and I did a fair amount of writing then, so I decided that I'd count this week in the total. 100 letters in about 5 weeks is about 20 letters per week - totally do-able, and probably pretty ho-hum average for my summertime output.

So, the challenge has begun. By April 1 I hope to have sent out 100 pieces of mail. So far this week I've done 14 already (7 postcards, 7 letters), so hey - I'm well underway! I think I can easily achieve my goal, but I want to keep myself on task and see how far I can exceed it.

As usual, my style is not to grab a pile of 10 letters and postcards and say "I'll respond to all of these NOW!", but instead I give each item its due response. Sometimes one response takes 10 minutes and sometimes it takes two hours, but that's the way I roll.

So I hope, if I owe you a letter or postcard and have for months, that you will see a response from me in the coming weeks. I will keep you all updated on the status of my output and the status of my Pile!

Home to many fine letters

I am overwhelmed (in a warm and lovely way) with all the letters I received while I was away at my grandfather's funeral, including many from blog readers offering condolences. Thank you all so much.

The current tally in the "needs response" pile is 58 (ooh, and I haven't gotten today's mail yet), but a few of those are multiples from the same people. I really look forward to responding to everyone (I've missed letter-writing, I didn't write any at all while away!), but please be patient. I WILL write you back, it just may take a while.



Coming home to a big batch of letters was such a joy. After all my exhausted unpacking and organizing last night upon my return, I curled up on the couch with a glass of wine and savored every letter.

Another hard-core letter-writing jag

I'm on another letter-writing binge, with a firm resolution to catch up on "the pile."

It is so damn much fun.

Yesterday I had a goal of 10 letters, and I exceeded it - I wrote 11!

I should focus on quality, not quantity, but I must say some of the bunch were pretty invested.

Now, one more blog entry, and then I should go back to letter-writing!

(As Dear You pointed out, thunderstormy days are great for letter-writing.)

Home again: the lovely letter piles!

I'm back home again, hooray!!! As requested, I'm sharing a photo of my backlog pile. The pile on the left, the most embarrassing part, is the letters awaiting responses that were already backlogged when I left on my trip. The pile on the right is the letters that arrived while I was away.

Enough blogging - I've gotta go read and write some letters!!!

Please be patient

I have to take a quick, photo-less moment to apologize for the delay in response letters, to anyone to whom I owe one. I am in the absolutely marvelous situation of being a tad bit overwhelmed by correspondence. I love having this problem, it just means it will take me more than my customary few days to get back to folks. Right now there are 28 letters in my pile (for those not in the know, "my pile" is the pile of letters I've received that are still awaiting responses) and today's mail hasn't even come yet. I've got a busy few days ahead of me with various commitments, but by next weekend I hope to be back in the groove of sending out more letters than I receive.

SO MANY blog readers have written me letters in the past month, I'm just verklempt. I love it. Thank you all so much! Please don't take this "please be patient" post as any sort of discouragement to writing, just as a caveat for what it is: be patient, and you'll definitely hear back from me!