i spent a lot of today staring at the pile of thank you cards i need to write.

i got half of one written. it’s hard to write thank you cards when you’re it seems like you’re holding a nursing baby all the time. and i thought, in passing, how the hell did i get all these written so promptly when Oscar was born?

Oscar was colicky. i was overwhelmed and exhausted, and still reeling, blah blah blah. but i wrote the damn thank yous, put a photo of Oscar in each one, labelled and addressed them and divied them up, some to the mailbox, some for Dave to drop off at the university to the many people there who gave us gifts at his birth. because i try to do that kind of thing, and it’s still relatively de rigeur around here, in this last bastion of the fifties. and because those social niceties matter to me when people have gone to the trouble to do something kind…it is a point of pride for me to make the effort in return. yes, i was raised by Emily Post. but i busted my ass on those thank you cards, that time around. when i had very, very little reserve to draw on for that busting.

imagine, then, my face when i happened upon six or seven of those two-and-a-half-year-old thank you cards tonight, still sealed, never delivered, in the bottom of Dave’s filing cabinet where he sent me to dig for folder tabs.

Dave has a very bad habit of forgetting things.

part of me is mortified. the good people from the university who never got properly thanked for the fine and lovely gifts you gave Oscar? um…uh…yeh. guess it’s a little late.

the bigger part of me is furious. foot-stomping, arm-flapping, indignantly righteously ragingly furiously mad, teeth pulled back from my lips like a hyena. comical, i suppose, given that the statute of limitations on thank you cards is likely past. but i’m all…besmirched. i never went out of my way to thank most of these people in person, because i thought they’d received a pleasant card, replete with photo memento, so for two+ years i’ve been blithely interacting with these colleagues without so much as a “hey, that was nice”. that’s rude. and i hate being rude. and i’d spent hours of my sleep-deprived time and energy to prepare those cards and photo mementoes, and all Dave had to do was take them to work and toss them in the internal mailbox. that’s it. and he TOLD me he’d done it.

i am entertaining sweet fantasies of me slaying him with my bare hands and teeth, after a hearty smiting and some loud recriminations.

except then…um…who would help with the baby?

so, crucifixion being an unfortunately unreasonable option, i resort to public shaming. bad Dave. bad, bad Dave. mad, mad Bonnie. stamps foot. sulks. begs you all to wag your fingers at him gloweringly.

perhaps i will just make him write all the Posey thank you cards himself.