30. Send Christmas cards on time

I'm not very good about sending Christmas cards. I'm just getting to the age where it's expected, yet every year I keep forgetting, and whatever, never felt like I had that many people to send them to. Most of my family is not on the UPS delivery area, and I lived in the same city as my friends, we saw each other anyway.

This year would be the first year Nate and I sent a card together as a couple.  Exciting!!  Also more of an expectation as we venture into the adult world.

The card would also be my chance to tackle the whole last name issue head first.  Maybe it's because I'm foreign born, with foreign parents, but I can't understand why adult independent women change their last names when they get married.  It's just not practical.  In this day an age when women can have bank accounts and mortgages, what's the need to go through all the paper work for this?

I don't get it.  I kinda want to go on a feminist rant, get on my soapbox about equaility and patriarchal values, but it's really not about that.  It's more of why anyone would expect a grown person with credit history, government IDs, passport, college diplomas, career history and legal paperwork to change their name and go through all the trouble of updating an entire adult functioning existence.  Not me, I dont have time for that $h*t, and I dont see how other people do.  But to each his own I guess, right?  If I expect people to accept me, I have to respect that others are different too.  Easier said than done.

So the Christmas card was the opportunity to make sure Nate's family understood what my whole name is and how to spell it.   I can't be upset that we got wedding gifts to Mr and Mrs "His las Name". After all people will do whatever is easiest without thinking it.   I thought I had made it clear that changing my name had never even been an option, but I don't blame his extended family for not following all my whims closely.  It's all good.  So the Christmas card is signed with our names, and future cards will have our names as well.

We'll see how it works.  Hopefully they get it.  If not, it was still fun designing the awesomely cheesy card, with photoshopped santa hats and glorious snowflakes.  I have a soft spot for dorky christmas decorations.