ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

Tonight I finished the last of the family thank-you cards.  I still have about twelve cards left to write to friends, but it feels good to have finished the bulk of things.  And because I take a lot of pride in writing good thank-you cards, each of them has a thoughtfully inscribed and unique message handwritten inside.  It just doesn’t feel like real gratitude to buy somebody a crappy card with a pre-printed message inside, scrawl my name in it, and send it off.  Everyone deserves to have it personally explained to them why their gift was special.

I tried to be highly organized when it came to my thank-you approach.  Writing appropriate thank-you notes is of the utmost importance to a person like me.  What type of person is that?  The person who read a 500 page Miss Manners book cover to cover during summer 2006.  So I made a spreadsheet.  Column A: everyone I wanted to thank for something; Column B: what I wanted to thank them for; Columns C & D: their mailing address; Column E: a column to put an “x” in when the note was written and ready to send; Column F: a column to put an “x” in when the note had been mailed.  I also created some conditional formatting to shade each line accordingly in green or blue depending on the status of Columns E and F (green for keep going, and blue for the relief I feel when one more card is finally done).

Then because I knew I couldn’t do all of them at once, I organized them into tiered groups according to urgency (based on familial closeness or time until I would see them again) and relationships (based on who knows who and who might talk to each other).  It wouldn’t do for one person to get a card and then mention it to their cousin who had also been there but had not received a card yet.  That might feel sad.  So I strategized the groups.  People like my husband’s parents, his sister, and his aunt and uncle who were kind enough to let use their condo for the reception were grouped as 1a.  I placed my coworkers in group 1b, since I would see them the following Monday and I wanted to get it out of the way before the honeymoon. More extended family were groups 2a, 2b, and 2c.  Friends were groups 3a, 3b, 3c and 3d.  I left most groups to do after the honeymoon.  I originally planned to do a marathon session before we left for New York, but I started to lose my steam partway in, and then my coworker friend mentioned to me that four to six weeks is an appropriate time frame, so I decided to just do it after the trip, when I could better take my time and really hit my thank-you stride.

When writing thank-you notes, I think that it’s a plus to write something friendly sounding and funny, especially if they gave you something.  Two of my husband’s cousins gave us a pretty shaving/makeup mirror, which I took to work with me to keep there.  I joked in my card that it would be useful for making sure I didn’t have a booger before going to an important meeting.  If you know anything about the person, I think it makes for a much nicer card to change your style to match their personality.  Are they funny? Serious?  The card should reflect that.  My husband’s grandparents are very proper and serious people.  They are also members of the Greatest Generation.  I wrote them a very proper card.

In the case of cash gifts, I like to describe the exciting things their money purchased for us.  Fancy French food.  Museum admission.  You know.  Cool stuff.  Then I contrast that from the things that other people’s money bought, such as toilet paper and razors and apples and practical things like that. Except for my coworker friend, who like me is a pragmatist.  To her, I wrote, “Just to let you know, your Target gift card was used today to purchase toilet tissue, antacid tablets, and disposable razors.”  I think she would be proud to know that she gave me the gift of easy digestion on my honeymoon.

We received several Target gift cards (really, hard to go wrong with one of those guys!) and one of my accountant friends had chosen a card with a Money water lilies painting on it.  When we went to MoMA I saw one of the real life paintings and remembered with great excitement that I still had the gift card in my wallet.

If I weren’t too lazy to make this photo into a card, this would be a really cool thank you card for that person.