Just when I thought it was safe to burn my foot-shaped Smartwool socks, Spring decided to retreat.
At least I have feet.
Am I right?? Although, I’d be grateful for stump-shaped Smartwool socks.
I WOULD.
Here’s a card:
Oh, and Jen and I chose the cards for The Spring Release!
WHAT??
Who am I to deprive the masses of their Zeichen Press cards??
Zeichen Press “art” was “punched up”, PDF’s were emailed to art licensing companies, and virtual hugs and kisses were exchanged. Look (soon) for some of our cards (NOT letterpress printed) in Big Box stores across the country.
And by look, I mean buy.
IF you don’t have some cute independent store near you. OR if you don’t care about letterpress printing. OR if you refuse to shop in our store. OR you are already buying a stroller and paper towels and light bulbs and ground beef and toilet paper and shampoo.
A teaser:
Is Spring really here?
Not sure…
Let’s pretend it is. Let’s let me live in a world filled with hope! My obsessive weather-tracking (hourly checking my weather app) has proven to be successful.
It won’t be long before smartwool socks are shed and (my) legs are shorn.
Stay tuned…
Here are a couple cards I made instead of penning a suicide note.
(Graduation)
(Encouragement)
As I said goodbye to yet another kitten from our cat ranch,
I thought to myself, “I bet this is exactly how Beyoncé feels when she drops an album.” And then I thought, “My skin is so dry.”
I wish I could travel back in time… back to the 1970’s when there were environmental chambers built into the walls of health club locker rooms… (I think this is a real memory and that I’m not just pasting a false memory on top of a traumatic childhood locker room incident… those topless moms blow-drying their hair… Wait, am I?? Omg… Beep beep boop: Tropical Rainforest?? Yes, please!)
NO MATTER, here’s a new card!
Some things are predictable – and thank goodness! It’s important to have things to count on… runny noses in February, militant-radical beheadings, and birthdays.
The kittens just stole the strand of toilet paper that I was using to wipe my runny nose… ISIS militants cover their faces in black balaclavas… and I write birthday cards.
OH, LIFE.
My grandpa’s battleship was bombed and he had to tread water for 13 hours WHILE he kept his unconscious buddy afloat. That was just like the time in 2009 that I swam out to meet the seal.
SPEAKING OF TREADING WATER.
It’s mid-February in Minnesota.
Jen’s in Austria because she loves gazebos.
The Intern (Madge) is in Italy because she loves dreamy landscapes.
And I am here because I love the smell of flooded basements. 
Is that asbestos tile??
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. See how we just throw caution to the wind over here?? I almost forgot what the floor looked like under 1,000 lbs of soaked carpet! And that was my lesson about not taking things for granted.
Between all that lesson-learnin’, I made a new card.
Don’t hurry home guys!
Tib knows it’s summer because the screens are on.
And *I* know it’s summer for other, more important, reasons.
But I’m trying to be a better person/less into body-sculpting, so I decided to read a book. It was written by The Intern’s daughter, Nora McInerny Purmot.
Chapter 25 was especially fun to read because Madge is so near and dear to my heart and I could relate to the notion of elder-abuse.
Except my mom has made it very clear that she wants to be euthanized via pillow-suffocation, pre-elder-abuse.
Oh, mom!
Wait a sec… This ice cream truck drives slowly by the house/Zeichen Press HQ every day,
but I have never really studied it…
Zoom… Enhance…
And again…
…
…
…
…
…
I KNEW IT.
RSVP wanted MORE greeting card submissions. And having a wet towel for a brain makes it so much easier to wring.
Remember last year when my lung collapsed and my mom had to sleep on a cot in my dingy bedroom so she could walk me to the bathroom in the middle of the night?
And EMTs had to come to that same dingy bedroom, on that very same night, because we thought my chest-tube had fallen out?
No?
I know you’re wondering if the EMTs were cute and why my bedroom was so dingy. Um, my mom volunteered to be their Resusci Annie doll and I’ve been a little too busy building the Zeichen Press Empire to focus on home-making frivolity.
But, between choosing paper/envelopes for the Spring Release and conquering territories, I did refresh my bedroom. And now I see no reason to ever leave it.
Choosing paint color is just like choosing ink color. But with less Jen and more anxiety.
Speaking of self-medicating (was I?) here’s a Spring Release teaser (see/buy ALL 12 from the shop!):
1985 : Minneapolis
One 13 year old girl (me) biked to Calhoun Square in Uptown to buy a record for her friend’s birthday and almost kept it for herself (myself).
I might have forgotten to ask to borrow the bike from my sister. And might have forgotten to ask permission from my mom to bike there. And I might have not brought a bike lock. And the bike might have been stolen from the entrance where it was super-discreetly parked behind the Calhoun Square signage. AND I might have had to walk home.
But how could I not risk everything (being grounded) to get that album when I was pretty sure Prince wrote Paisley Park about me??:
Colorful people whose hair
On 1 side is swept back
Sigh.
After coughing the web of mucus from my throat, it was time to choose paper and envelope colors for the Spring Release.
Dinah told me later that she was plotting my murder while I took this photo.
Oh, Dinah! What will make you snap?!
Wait, tell us more about the web of mucus!
No! No more. Onto more important things.
Like frogs im Deutschland.
Who needs pants when you have legs like that? Amiright??
Miss Sherman was our 5th grade music teacher and aside from corporeal punishment and unruly hair, she was perfect. Every week, students were encouraged to bring in their favorite record album. And because lessons are best learned through repeated humiliation (read about First Picture Day at my new school), I brought in my favorite album.
…I wonder what the other kids brought! This is SO much fun!
…Wait…
Michael Jackson, Off The Wall…
The Cars, Panorama??…
Oh, Kermit! Nobody understands us/Miss Sherman forgot to call on me/oh look, this record barely sticks out between my stack of books/these darn Fall allergies make my eyes water!
I wouldn’t tell my mom about this while I stood by the piano as she played folk songs and I sang my little heart out. I WOULDN’T.
What I’m trying to say is that Jen and I picked cards for our Spring Release.
Here’s a teaser:
One of our many cats had chronic diarrhea. We kept her around because she produced litter after litter of adorable white kittens.
And because coming home was always a surprise – where would we find her poop today?? In the mitten-bin… in the laundry basket… under my daughter’s pillow??
Life is so full of surprises!
Like, when the vet called to say she died after he removed her ovaries. SURPRISE! Oh, but now she doesn’t send us on poop-hunts, because she’s buried in a shallow grave in the backyard.
First life zigs, and then it zags!
Broken femur?
SERIOUSLY???