**An Open Letter to Alexis Stewart:
Dear Alexis Stewart,
If you want to be friends with me, just ask. You don’t need to buy all of your Christmas and birthday AND Mother’s Day cards from me.
Friends Forever,
Fran
—
Whew! I’m glad I got that out of the way! Thanks to Mail Chimp, our email-blast campaign was full of success.
Wanna know what Mother’s Day card Martha Stewart is getting in 2016???
I’LL NEVER TELL!!!
Does my IQ have to be higher to understand Sci-Fi films?? 
As the credits rolled for Interstellar, I whispered, to myself, “whaaat???” Maybe I should have taken 100 classes to prep me? All of that technlogy and time-talk made me wish I was working on the new Zeichen Press catalog that Jen so agressively marked-up.
I’LL GET TO IT. As soon as I finish rewatching Mad Men.
And while I’m (not) doing that, The Intern
is gallivanting about in Italy like some sort of hippie. Well, let’s just see if you have a studio to come home to. (OMG, I’M KIDDING. Please come home. And bring us souvenirs.)
“WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT??”
~Fran Shea
These cards stopped me right in my (dog) poop-covered tracks:
Let’s be friends, Emily McDowell.
Too needy?
Dinah always makes such a big deal about choosing paper and envelope color for a new release.
First, she has Jen print a card:
And then she does this:
She is such a taskmaster.
Greeting cards would be better if they were huge. And I could wipe my feet on them.
And what better way to spread the Good Word of Zeichen Press than by emblazoning it upon the doormat of every doorstep for every home throughout the land?
High Cotton makes lots of things, for lots of people. And now they will make doormats for us. I mean, for you. They’ll make doormats for you. Designed by us.
…El Niño. I know I’m supposed to be cursing Climate Change… I KNOW.
But how can I curse when meteorologists are predicting a warmer-than-usual winter??
I must embrace the phenomenon the way a mother embraces her wayward son.
IN OTHER NEWS, Jen and I chose 12 cards for the next release using darts, a cardboard cutout of Steve Buscemi, and our first-aid kit.
Here’s a teaser:
And because I always plan ahead, here’s a new Father’s Day card:
This is the face of a girl who got a globe for Christmas the year before. A girl determined to prove to everyone how much she needed; NAY, deserved the Lite-Brite. 
Santa would never make that mistake again.
This determination guided the girl for a lifetime, nothing would stand between her and her singleminded fixations. 
NOTHING.
One of the latest obstacles were some pesky illustrated creatures 
who needed to be removed so one frog could fulfill his God-given right to sing Wayne Newton.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRPILZS1hc8
And sing he did.
Yours for only $4.50! (SOON.)
Usually bragging is reserved for Facebook, family newsletters, and prison cells. But showering has made me feel fancy and solitary confinement has made me such a blabbermouth!
SO behold our new bathroom:
Millie wanted to show off the bathroom but she isn’t tall enough to open the backdoor.
Too bad we re-screened that door!
Did that squirrel even know he/she was the color of my new grout?? I’m kidding! I’m sure he/she did!
Speaking of Dove Gray™ grout, (WERE WE??) I made a new card. Intern #1 said it was Mom Humor. I told her to go to her room.
