The first sign that I had trouble with my elves came by way of a text message.
“Thanks for thinking of us with a Christmas card, but the envelope we received was empty.”
Nice one, I chided myself, recalling the frantic 6 a.m. addressing-and-stuffing spree of a few days earlier. Chicken Little and I, not actually locating any elves on the premises, had tackled the job ourselves. Apparently at least one of us hadn’t had enough coffee.
Thank goodness we’d only missed one.
But then came an email. “My dad says he got an empty envelope from you. Were you sampling too many Christmas cocktails or were the kids helping?”
Both. The answer is both. 6 a.m. cocktails are my favorite.
But now I was alarmed. I’d sent humbugs to two households that I knew of. How could I know there weren’t more? I held my breath and waited for additional notification of failed mail.
It came from the post office.
A bundle of seven bent and smashed up envelopes, bearing a blunt inked message: “no contents.” Apparently the sorting machines had caught ahold of these unsealed gems and punted them back to me.
Little and I had a little chortle at that one. Oh, we’re such silly-heads! Silly silly silly-heads!
By now I’d noticed a pattern. Anyone with last names in the F-H section of the alphabet on my master list was potentially a victim. So when Captain Daddy texted the news that his high school girlfriend (last name: G) had received an empty envelope, I replied, “Saw that coming.”
I readdressed, stamped, and this time, stuffed, envelopes, trying to be grateful that the fallout from my overwhelmed holiday multitasking was only a little humiliation instead of, oh, I don’t know, accidentally leaving the kids at the mall.
At least not yet.
Before I stuck the cards in the mail, I inked a short message on the back: “Damn elves.”