I see it! October 13th is the Dim Light at the End of the Dark Tunnel… The Big Day.
The last day to vote for us.
Despite my well documented crippling math anxiety, 
I’ve done some calculations: 4 days of voting remaining x 6 votes per day = 24 votes per person.
You better double-check that number/go vote! <–That’s the link!
I barely wept with gratitude when I found out Minnesota Business Magazine wanted to write about Zeichen Press for Martha Stewart’s American Made competition… And when Minnesota Business Magazine writer, Erica Rivera, told me to hush my pretty mouth so she could interview me, I did hush my pretty mouth. I do as I’m told. I DO.
Anyway, Erica wrote this masterpiece:
And then I scooped the litter box.
AND here’s a page about litter boxes from my STILL UNSOLD book:
Remember how I promised that when my painkillers wore off, I’d make a card based on The Lung Collapsing Event? It turns out that I only needed them for a couple of days and flushed the rest ~ DON’T GET ANY IDEAS ~ and then I made this breakup card:
Recovering from a collapsed lung is the perfect time to learn all about hashtags.
Thank you, lung!
I obsessively tweeted and nagged everyone on Facebook. I’M SORRY EVERYONE.
Wait, #HelpMe.
It’s been a trending/not-trending rollercoaster-week for Zeichen Press…
YOU MUST REALLY BE SUFFERING!
But may the best (wo)man (named Fran and Jen) win. Did I mention that you have to vote 6x every day through October 13th? And did I mention that my doctor told me that my other lung will collapse if we don’t win??
PS: I made a new Mother’s Day card…
Running for student council vice president of my Freshman class was so stressful! Our platform was twofold:
1) Instruct — and therefore unify — our class via a comprehensive Class Cheer: “Nine-tee! Nine-tee! Ninetyninetyninety nine-tee!!! YAYYYY!!”
2) Oh, I guess it was only a onefold platform…
NEEDLESS TO SAY, votes were cast, and I won. It was a real nail-biter.
SPEAKING OF VOTING, you can finally start voting for Zeichen Press here!
And you can (and should!!) vote 6x per day! SIX TIMES. PER DAY.
Yikes! That sounds scary!
Lungs are not supposed to collapse, but that’s what makes life so exciting! Sunday mornings could be all jejune French toast and bacon, OR they could be all ambulance and emergency surgery.
(I was just as stoic as the woman in the above illustration while they performed my surgery. Eyes wide open, no tears.)
Life is so full of twists and turns!
There is nothing like having your very own chest tube — my aunt said it was my friend. And indeed it was! My little friend with a one-way valve who caused me nothing but suffering. After just two days, the doctor pulled my friend out of my chest — and again, like the woman in the illustration: I was stoic, with eyes wide open and no tears.
I’ll write a card about this as soon as my painkillers wear off.
Farewell my Wintertime Prison… Springtime is the amnesty hors d’oeuvre and reminds all (in these Northern climates) of the duality of nature.
See the flattened squirrel on the bike path? (Why is it SO flat on a bike path? WHY??)
And see the lilacs in full bloom? (DO YOU??!! Face-meltingly beautiful…)
Hmm, people also think about baseball in the Spring? Right? How about a congratulations card for the bros?
(((flashback)))
My husband was on a business trip, and that meant it was time for one or more of the kids to get the stomach flu. Because we love tradition, the youngest barfed in her own bath water. While I was cleaning that up, and not to be outdone, the middle one inhaled and regurgitated his macaroni & cheese right back on the plate.
The older one slunk away.
While I was cleaning that up, and unbeknownst to me, the cat coughed up a slimy hair-ball. I stepped on it (barefoot).
While I stood on one foot, crying, the dog came over and licked it up.
The End
By age nine, I would delicately,
with my right hand, fold down the sharp fins of a Sunfish.
Why?
So I could use my left hand to insert the rusty pliars into the gasping mouth of my catch to retrieve the swallowed hook.
If I was lucky.
If I wasn’t lucky, I’d stare at my motionless bobber for hours.
*Some backstory: My older brother (third of eight) allowed me to fish with him if I did whatever he said, and didn’t cry. He was SERIOUS about fishing. I had glasses and greasy blonde hair.
**Some backstory about the backstory: My brother was born in September, and I was already a sprouted seed in our Mom’s belly by the next Summer.
I think I’ve used the bobber-watching metaphor before, but it is APT. Everyday, I wait for my agent to tell me to get the rusty pliars.
Why doesn’t he ever tell me to get the rusty pliars??
He just tells me to “hang in there.”
Oh, back to my Mom… She has 22 grandkids. This is her with the latest:
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!
I’ve heard that we are only prescribed challenges tailored to fit our deficiencies. I don’t really have any deficiencies so I’ve just been row-row-rowing my boat, gently down the stream.
But poor Jen spent the week hunting for bedbugs (that’s what she gets for going to Turkey) that turned out to be fleas. 
It took six flea-bombs and one hijab to properly fumigate.
Doesn’t Henry look ashamed?
Doesn’t Jen’s forehead look youthful?? I photoshop-botoxed it! AND saved her $200.
She’ll thank me later.
While she was busy meeting her prescribed challenge (I pray that she learned her lesson), *I* was busy nobly accepting rejections for The Book.
Eight rejections so far… twelve still unresponsive. But don’t worry about me, I LOVE waiting, and see rejection as an opportunity to grow as a person.
SPEAKING OF MOTHER’S DAY, here’s a new card:
Is that a true story??
They wouldn’t print it if it wasn’t true.
Sally Struthers says that for about four dollars, you can buy a Starbucks Caffé Latte Venti… In the Zeichen Press Shop, for just four dollars a day, you can bring laughter to someone who may or may not have been laughing.
The choice is yours.
NOW, visit the shop to see our new release for Spring! You can buy the rage-filled kitten, the generous old woman,
my kind of tea party,
Jen made me pull six cards from our line.
APPARENTLY, “they don’t sell” and don’t “make any money”.
But since when can you put a price tag on greeting cards??
Here are the cards, you can buy them from the shop until they are gone forever.
FOREVER.
This card was also on the list, but I refused to pull it because I’m not afraid of her.
I turned 42 (wtf?) yesterday, received 18 drinking glasses, a scallop taco from Sea Salt, and this:
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, I sent 20 little book samples to my agent…
So now he can go pitch them to 20 publishers.
I imagine his conversations go something like this:
Peter: Here’s a new little adult picture book by Fran Shea, owner of Zeichen Press in Minneapolis, maker of cards for people that like laughing.
Publisher Person: Let me put my eyeballs back in my sockets and write you a check for $1,000,000.
Peter: Very good.
END SCENE.
Oh, I also made a new Easter card. Don’t send me hate email like you did for my zombie Easter card. Jesus loves me, this I know for the bible tells me so.
Jen’s back!
Thank God.
She said she “missed ZP soooo much!”
ZP missed her too! To show her just how much, this rabbit (mascot) sacrificed and froze himself to the ground right in front of the gate she walks through to enter the ZP Headquarters.
ALSO, I wrote/designed a new cover for my book… Kara is busily drawing pictures while I bark directions at her. I’m sure she’s already made a voodoo doll of me.
I don’t blame her a bit.
No, no… don’t worry about me — I’m fine! I actually enjoy imagining exotic travel. Who needs all of that packing and jet-lag… and those language barriers?… No thanks!
Jen is (still) in Turkey
(is she ever coming home??) and I am here.
See how I put my feet in the picture so that you can tell that I’m REALLY here?
My daydreams are broken only by Tib the Cat.
And the other inmates’ bickering.
But shouldn’t I embrace this opportunity during Lent for self-denial?
FINE.
Jen is in Istanbul (was Constantinople, now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople)
and I discuss cannibalism after a family dinner. “Apparently,” says Number One Son, “human meat tastes just like bison.”
And so on.
If this Winter ever ends (will it?? Did I just imagine warmer days??), students will graduate and I made a card for such an occasion: