It’s that time again, my least favorite aspect of our Idiots’Books industry: mailing time. It’s fun to come up with ideas for books. It’s fun to write them. It’s fun to put my head together with Robbi and brainstorm how the text and illustrations will interact. But once the books are written, illustrated, and constructed, we are faced with the decidedly unglamorous task of generating labels, folding letters, stuffing envelopes, and applying stamps.

Yesterday was a double-doozy on the mailing front. In addition to the Volume 24 mailing, we decided to send out a festive holiday postcard to 273 of our favorite people in the world. This required 273 labels and 273 stamps.

Alden tried her best to be helpful.

But, ultimately, she didn’t seem to understand where the stamp was supposed to go.

I wonder how much it costs to send a baby first class?

If you would like be on the list of “favorite people” who occasionally receive festive holiday (and other) postcards from us, just send me your mailing address.

After we finished with the postcards, I assembled the subscriber mailing. The current volume, titled The New South, is a cross-media collaboration between Robbi and me and our good friend Drew Bunting, who is not only an extremely talented singer/songwriter/punk rocker but also an Episcopal priest. I wrote a companion story for the album, which Robbi illustrated along with the jacket and disc itself. (I’ll do a full post on The New South next week once it has landed in our subscribers’ mailboxes.)

In any case, stuffing the CD, the festive holiday postcard, and accompanying letter into envelopes took some doing. Applying four stamps to each envelope took some doing. Licking each bad-tasting envelope flap took some serious doing.

Is this dull, tedious, and uninteresting? I suspect it is. This pleases me, however. I want you to feel just a little bit of my pain.

Now, to reward your persistence, here are some photos of the child in her throne, doing her best to dominate and demoralize a small cup of organic vanilla yogurt.

She has only recently gained the manual dexterity to bend the spoon to her iron will.

One could argue that she still has a ways to go before she will be able to boast of full mastery. Indeed, at times the spoon is still to much an impediment to the full, expeditious enjoyment of her meal. Who needs a spoon when one’s fingers will suffice?

Here’s hoping you are having a wonderful Friday and that your weekend is focused on something other than assembling large mailings (or learning how to use a spoon).