Ever have those days when you feel like everyone is full of bologna?  Let me just say there is an awfully big cloud of deli mustard emanating from the Rhode Island State House.

A certain governor, whom I like, and whom I voted for, has decided that the Christmas tree at the state house should be called a “Holiday Tree” so as not to offend anyone. 

Come again?

You know what?  That is the most misplaced attempt at so-called political correctness I have ever heard.  A Christmas tree cannot be offensive.  It is a fun, sparkly, joyous, cheerful, beautiful, twinkly thing.  It emotes joy and happiness simply by virtue of being so darn pretty to look at.

Every year we hear the news stories about some narcissistic moron who opposes the local nativity scene and lobbies lawmakers to get it removed from the town hall or state house property, under the auspices of it being unlawful and/or offensive to the spirit of the separation of church and state.  Guess what… once again we have something that is a sweet, joyous and happy scene which is, by its very nature, unoffensive.  There are proud parents, a beautiful, healthy newborn, adoring visitors, angels and some very cute farm animals.  How can that possibly be offensive?!

I realize that not all people worship in the same way.  And that fact, according to our forefathers and just plain old common sense, is absolutely fine.  Anyone who purports to find these cheerful reminders of the season offensive really has too much time on his hands. 

You could pepper the state house lawn with 12 Christmas trees, 26 renditions of the nativity, a 40 foot menorah, a gigantic statue of the Buddha, and an enormous garland-bedecked statue of Ganesha and I wouldn’t bat an eyelash.  In fact, I’d rather enjoy looking at the festive outpouring of goodness that these icons represent.  Imagine how much fun our children would have milling around and marveling at the sheer beauty and benevolence of it all.

Those among us who take issue with such expressions of faith and celebration ought to grow up and take a moment to appreciate the beauty and wonder of it all.

Greetings my friends.  I have a funny story to tell you.  Although the humor escaped me at first, I was reminded by my highly perceptive daughter that we cant take everything so seriously in life; and “Really Mom, you gotta laugh.”

As you may or may not know, I recently opened my first on-line store which features unique greeting cards, which I have designed.  All the designs and photography are original.  This week I’ll be adding prints and box collections, which make really nice gifts…..ahem…hint, hint !

website:  www.shop.grouchycat.com

I used Shopify to build the site.  It is said to be user friendly even to those of us who are technologically challenged.  I will agree with that wholeheartedly.  Both the part about it being user friendly, and the part about me being technically challenged!!!  But have you ever been in a situation so new that you don’t even know how much you really don’t know about how it all works?   Well, that was me yesterday.  Shopify allows one to do all sorts of lovely things, including checking website traffic.  I would dutifully check this every day.  I was excited to see the number of page hits and visitors increase exponentially over the last three weeks.  I couldn’t figure out, however, why I hadn’t sold even one card!  Surely the cards can’t be so horrific that not one individual in 1800 visitors would buy one…even just one, in all those visitors.  Isn’t there some mathematical concept called the “Law of Averages?”

After thinking on it long and hard, I decided to purchase one of my cards in order to see how the whole process works.  I ordered the card, put in my payment information, clicked “confirm purchase,” and received a message which said, “Grouchy Cat does not deliver to that address.”  Wha-huh?!

After staring at the screen in disbelief, I delved right into all the site preferences….especially the shipping preferences.  As it turns out, I had never set them because I did not realize that I had to set a bunch of information for every place to which my cards would be shipped!  This is when I was reminded by the young sage with whom I live that this was actually monumentally funny.  After I calculated all the possible lost revenue, I did just that.  It’s not my usual m.o.:  normally I would berate myself for hours on end and plop myself down on the couch to watch 626 episodes of Law & Order that I’ve DVR’d.  But this time, I just corrected the problem, and laughed at my own stupidity.

The moral of the story?  Well, I don’t have one, but it feels like one of those stories in which there is an actual moral.  So I decided that the moral was my cards really are beautiful and/or funny, and that I am very likely not the only person on the planet that thinks so.  (yes, a decidedly self-serving and selective moral, but we’re dealing with a delicate psyche of an artist here)

I guess, too, that one could say that life contains all kinds of mishaps, self-created and other, and that we ought not to spend too much time boo-hooing about it, but rather seek to resolve things and march forward.

I sincerely hope that you got a little chuckle from this; and take it as a reminder to be gentle and forgiving with yourself the next time you mess something up.

Have a fantabulous day