Comfort

Jessica continued a theme...relaxing on the couch with her mom! They watched a ton of Glee.  Its funny that she wrote about this comfortable time at home, because that's what this farm image evokes for me.  I have a secret (well, not anymore!) wish to take and collect my own photographs of old barns and possible live in a barn turned into awesome home!

This reminded Jessica of when her Mom would tape whole seasons of Survivor and send the (VHS!) tapes to us in college.  We would devour them all at once, and doing this was one of my favorite memories about being roomates.  I remember lots of life that happened around our survivor marathons.  Speaking of moms, Jessica also wrote about her excitement that I was going to be one.  She had tons of questions for me and was ready to be super supportive.

Harvest Scene

Jessica was back in the US for last year's Thanksgiving.  She took the time to do all the things that she loved! shopping, cooking vegetables, throwing pots, and drawing.  Jess told me this scratchboard art was inspired by Oskar and Theodor Hofmeister's "The Haymaker".  She and her mom spent Thanksgiving watching "Sahah" and enjoying time together.  While Jessica wrote it wasn't a typical Thanksgiving, I think spending time with family is always the traditional thing to do.

Good neighbors

I'm not sure if this is a scene from her neighborhood, but on this card Jessica both was thankful for amazing people that lived right near her and tried to get me to visit.  Perhaps to meet them? She wrote it had been too long since I had seen her in the flesh...very true pal. I never made it to her corner of Africa when I traveled there in July. But we talked on the phone often enough that I felt like I knew her neighbors and sounds of her neighborhood. 

Thank you!

Its Christmas day and the end of the year, which is always a good time to reflect on the year. I have been a bit behind in all sorts of communication - phone calls, letters, emails, bills, faxes - you name it and I am surely late.  When we started this project, we agreed to be forgiving with each other. No judgement when we fall a bit behind or crank out a wacky card. In honor of another year of mail and just because it is fun, here is a big thank you song for 2012 postcards here. Hope you are having a great day Lynn!

Family

Its nice when Jess titles her cards for me, especially this one!  I'm not sure I would have guessed these people on stilts were her Dad and her brother racing.  On this card she lamented not seeing her family very often.  Here's hoping each of you can be with family this holiday season.  It can be fun to miss one (or two) Christmases or Thanksgivings while on an adventure, but after a while a person craves home!

What a bikini!

Can you cheat at this project? 
Lynn wondered a year ago when she sent me a card she made in 2009 for a party that she had helped plan at a former job. Not surprisingly, she had been made 'invitation guru' for holiday parties and the slew of baby showers that had hit the office during that period.

In my opinion, Lynn was not cheating but she was enabling strange office behavior as she created this card as an invitation for an office pool party.  This explains the bikini on the grinning snowman - er, I mean snow-woman - but it does nothing to explain why someone would want to attend an office pool party. Is it only me who would prefer to leave my glaring thighs to my colleagues' imagination? Perhaps more precisely, I am hoping that they have no imagination or interest in imagining such things at all!

Unexpected and poetic 2

Jessica was on a lot of airplanes and on a roll with looking deeper at life last September.  She called it here traveling series.  Jessica took a long flight with her Dad and had an encounter with a stewardess. You know the kind that happens between strangers on a plane overnight where you are sleeping and eating with perfect strangers? It's formal and intimate all at the same. Jessica commented "she was uniform, and then she wasn't."