I am sorry, 1327. Whoever you are.

I'm that cruel and horrible, horrible person who puts sweatshirts on dogs. Just mine, though. I don't usually go around clothing other people's dogs. Mine is enough of a hassle to wiggle into a sweater or sweatshirt.

But, because Dave says I'm cheap (I say frugal, but it's a tomato, tomah-to thing), it's 62 degrees in our house. And our dog, with few body-heat-producing mechanisms, has to be cold, I tell myself.

And the only way to remedy that is to clothe him and then take embarrassing photos of him. Because I am that woman now. The one who clothes and photographs her dog.



In other news, because the subject desperately needs changing,
I am a criminal. There, I said it. Arrest me, FBI. I, Erin Wasinger, opened the mail from our own mailbox -- for SHAME -- tearing through the Christmas card without looking at the envelope.

Being a newlywed, I wasn't shocked to be standing in the living room going "Who ARE these people?" Dave has relatives in Tennessee, Missouri ... I figured it had to be one of them.

So I was shocked to see the return address label on the envelope that I so cheerfully tore through said the card was from a place none other than Oshkosh. I am Dave's only relative in Oshkosh. And, we expect to get about zero cards from people in Oshkosh this year. Oh, and our house isn't No. 1327, as the envelope says. Oops.

I threw the phony "reduce your student loan rate!" envelopes, of which I get about 3.7 pieces a week on average, on the table and Dave and I tried to salvage the envelope. We stuck in the card quickly, then giggled as we tried to get the adhesive to stick again. And there it sits, hours later, looking like the saddest, most dejected piece of holiday cheer.

It's like a bad movie; the card all bent in a ripped, soggy envelope (it rained today) sitting on a table all by its lonesome. The camera would probably zoom out to show you a cold, 62-degrees house and a poor, poor dog in a sweater.

Or maybe I just envision the card as being more depressing than it really is because I know one or both of us should take it to No. 1327 and introduce ourselves as the heartless jerks behind the Christmas card envelope fiasco of 2006.