I really feel that signing up for Netflix should make it so I don’t get Netflix popups anymore. YOU CONVINCED ME. Stop telling me how great it is! It’s like my father-in-law talking to me, with his many detailed persuasive arguments that would be so much more persuasive if I didn’t already agree with him. He tells me “The way to do that would be… (exactly whatever I’m already doing).” And then argues with me that I should do it.

I nod politely and say things like, “Yep.” and “Yep!” and “Yeah…” while the whole time in my head I’m jumping up and down flapping my arms because I Already! AGREEEEEE OMFG DUDE stop telling me words.

And then I kill him.

So watch your ass, Netflix.

But also, thank you Netflix for your speedy delivery of the IMAX dolphin movie, a mediocre documentary which features narration by Pierce Brosnon and the many dolphin-related recordings of Sting, and interviews with the world’s most reknowned dolphin dorks. Nicolaus loved it and? Did you know? That that movie was going to turn him into a dolphin?

I have to say I sort of thought it might. But we pretended to be surprised by his transformation, and he spent the evening clicking and squeaking at us all.

Which as an aside, I’m not sure that we as a species should be working so hard to figure out dolphin language. I mean, we can barely hold this global society together as it is without having to consult the motherfucking dolphins on all major world decisions. Because obviously the first thing the dolphins would say to us is “We want a UN seat.”

And the second thing they would say is, “Hey, that tuna net thing? WHAT IN THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM?”

And the third thing would be, “Which by the way, what did you do with all that tuna. Because we feel that we should receive at least a portion… you know… it’s only fair… seeing as like 2/3 of us died and all…”

And the fourth thing would be, “But don’t give any to those beluga whale guys. They’re a bunch of creepy-looking dolphin-wannabe blowholes whose extinction frankly can’t come soon enough.”

And the fifth thing would be, “Wooooo! Look at my cool jumping spin!!”

And the sixth thing would be, “WOOOOOOOOO!! DID YOU FUCKING SEE THAT?”

And the seventh thing would be, “But seriously. UN seat.”

“If when Graham grows up, if he ever tells me he wants to be a soldier? Me and him are going to get in a big argument.”

Holy crap. This kid blows me away with his wisdom sometimes.

“…And I’ll tell him that he can’t be a soldier. And he’ll say YES, it is okay for me to do that. It is safe, Nicolaus. And I will tell him no you can’t because it is so, so dangerous, you know? And I’ll tell him no. And we’ll go back and forth saying that same stuff again to each other, over and over and over. And it will be kind of like a really huge argument.”

The words hang in the air. He gets this real serious look on his face, a faraway look that I recognize.

“Hey, do you need to go potty?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes I’m sure. I told you already that I don’t need to go…”

“NicolAUS…”

“You know why I look serious?”

“Because you need to go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“Okay, then why?”

“I’m just lookin’ serious because I’m thinking about that argument. That me and Graham are going to have.”

“NICOLAUS PLEASE don’t have an accident. Do you need to go?”

“No.”

“Are you SURE?”

“I think I might.”

“Okay let’s go.”

“Actually I think it might already be too late.”

Did I say wisdom?

“I like this musekit.” He can pronounce anything… even nuclear, which actors portraying nuclear fucking physicists can’t even say… but he can’t say “music” or “interesting”. This musekit is insterding.

“Yeah? This is called disco. It’s dance music from a long time ago. People used to go to disco places and they’d all dance like this.” I did my best John Travolta moves from behind the steering wheel. We were at a stop light, so you know… it was perfectly safe. And I’m sure everyone who saw me thought I looked awesome.

Twenty seconds later, I experienced the crystallized moment that everyone hopes someday will be their life: driving to the post office with two small children disco dancing to Brick House in the back seat. Their little pointer fingers jabbed the air in remarkable time to the beat, first to the left, then to the right, then up in the air, and down low.

I want a brick! HOUSE.

Nicolaus was delighted that not only is disco music fun to dance to, but it also conveys themes relating to the use of structurally sound building materials when constructing a home. Having recently expressed concern to his preschool teacher that the story of the three pigs is a little too scary and violent, he approved of this man’s desire to own a brick! HOUSE.

“Mama?”

“Yeah?”

“You know what I bet? I bet a long long time ago, when people used to dance to this kind of musekit a lot… I bet people had to be really careful!”

“Why?” Surely he doesn’t know that disco caused tens of thousands of people to have unprotected sex, which led in part to the AIDS epidemic and to a whole generation of kids named Jennifer.

“Because they probably poked each other in the eye a lot.”

“Well. You’re right actually. That was a huge problem back then.” I’m going to hell for this and for the santa claus thing. He’s skeptical, but too bad. I’m sticking to the Christmas magic story because it’s very important to Kevin and I both as parents to instill in our children a sense of awe and wonder at the glory of those claymation holiday specials.

“Is that why people don’t ‘isten to disco a lot anymore?”

“Yep. Pretty much.”

“I would have just invented special goggles. Disco goggles. To protect my eyes if I ever went to one of those disco places.”

“Man! If you had been alive back then, you totally could have made goggles for everyone.”

He nodded and kept jabbing the air alongside his brother, who was loving this wild pointy dancing game. “Careful Graham,” he warned, “I’m not wearing my disco goggles. BE MORE CAREFUL.”

Poor Graham. I wonder at what point little kids realize that their older siblings are like totally spacefuck insane. I’m the oldest, so I don’t know. When my brother was two I clicker trained him like a hollywood dog. When he was five he willingly played school even though playing school with me as the teacher? Sucked. There was actual homework and everything. And when he was six, he put on that dress like I told him he needed to… for protection against um… something. And now that I think about it, that was the last time he ever listened to a word I said so I’m guessing most children reach that milestone around six. Or whatever point their older sibling puts them in a dress for allegedly important reasons and then runs and gets mom because oh my god mom, this is some funny shit you have got to come and see.

I can’t tell you about anything other than SuperBlast. I want to, but SuperBlast so dominated the day that I’m sorry. It has to be all about Superblast, even though it’s been a busy week with Graham having his one-year check up and getting bunches of immunizations, I assume for rabies based on the number and apparant painfulness.

SuperBlast! SuperBlast is an old show that me and Graham used to watch all the time. It was a really hilarious show, you know? SuperBlast has these things attached to his knees that look like water bottles but they aren’t. They are magical powers and they let him shoot fire out of them without any fuel or anything. And that! Lets Superblast fly!

In bold because apparantly every word that anyone says about SuperBlast must be shouted. BY LAW.

Graham is still in the 75th percentile for height but has only gained four ounces since his last checkup, putting him way down in the 5th percentile for weight. I remain in the 95th percentile for neurotic worrying about why my kid is so skinny even though it’s probably that my mom is using voodoo to punish me for eating only a bowl of macaroni and cheese and four pieces of cinnamon toast between 1979 and 1983, but this is different, Mom. Graham EATS. It’s creepy for someone to eat that much and be that skinny. How is a mother not supposed to worry? If I called any social worker and told them that my son eats his own body weight in food, weighs nothing, and is extremely manic and active all day long they would say, “Lady, your son has a problem, most likely a meth addiction and/or tapeworm.”

It’s just not normal.

Which, speaking of not normal:
There is this very nice man. He’s not SuperBlast, he’s a man who is nice but he’s not very tough. And there’s a carnivore who is enormous, like a animal kind of like a tyrannosaurus but his head reaches all the way up – out of the atmosphere.

So Graham, this poor child who has already spent most of his life unable to breathe through his nose, feels like shit this week on account of all the shots. The only nice part is that he and Nicolaus have the same exact voice, which means that when he’s sick he too sounds exactly like Fred Savage must have sounded as a toddler. I love my children, but oh man. I love them even more when they sound like they’re narrating The Wonder Years in garbled Dutch.

Because of the shots and the feeling like shit, Graham isn’t interested in eating much this week, adding to my stupid thing of wanting him to gain weight. But tonight I was pushing cookies on him and he was stubbornly signing finished and saying with his raspy Fred Savage voice, “Da-DA” (which clearly means “All done!” — I’m telling you, I swear to holy God this child talks), when I realized wait, get a grip Tiffany. He’s turning down COOKIES. What is the fucking problem? Every mother dreams of having a child who refuses to eat cookies! Because hey! One less person to share my damned cookies with. And these were the good shit, too… the kind I have to sneak in the kitchen to get because they cost like a dollar each and Nicolaus would eat them all in one sitting if… well, if he were me.

I was lying, the carnivore is not really that tall, but it’s really huge. And that carnivore always chases that nice man in every show and tries to eat him because he looks like he has a lot of yummy meat in him. So SuperBlast! Flies – magically flies across that whole entire island and just fights that carnivore and FIGHTS HIM and saves that nice man. Because he? Is tough! And he has a lot of swords tied to his back. Like five plus five swords, and a scary pop gun like Christopher Robin has. It is really cool. It’s kind of violent and scary when he runs out of swords and the people at the sword shop run out of swords so he can’t even buy more, but it’s a really funny show.

One day when I have the energy I want to write a long letter to Graham, telling him how amazing he is, how he just sparkles from the inside, how sweet and hilarious and totally nuts he is, climbing up and diving over the edge of the couch while hollering Badooooo which I am almost definitely sure means “I am the lizard king! I can do anything!”

I thought about just copying one of Dooce’s amazingly beautiful and heartfelt newsletters, but Graham has no idea what Elmo is, and he almost never wears pigtails.

Dear Graham,

love,
Mama.

You see why Heather makes the big bucks and not me. She has that whole sentence structure/cohesive paragraph thing going on. I’ve tried it, but then I start editing and it takes a whole different kind of energy for me to finish a post. Besides, where’s the fun in knowing at the beginning of the paragraph what you’re going to talk about the whole way through? Why don’t I just go back to grad school and defend my thesis that The Awakening fails as a feminist work when compared to The Yellow Motherfucking Wallpaper?

Ooh which reminds me! Speaking of my inability to focus on one topic for more than thirty-five seconds, we joined Netflix this week. Our first movie showed up right away. It’s called Animals are Beautiful People, an incredible documentary by the same guy who wrote The Gods Must Be Crazy. It’s really awesome except for this one part where… well, I don’t want to spoil it for you. But oh my god you guys, what kind of sick assholes were able to sit there and film this stuff and not run over there and careflight all those damned baby pelicans out of there?

In conclusion, SuperBlast. And this one time SuperBlast was so nice that he sometimes tied a rope around himself and then he got a needle and sewed the other end of that rope to the nice man, so that way when he flew around? That nice man got to fly too! But he wore a special plastic suit that protected him whenever he accidentally flew that nice man into some wires. So the nice man didn’t get shocked.

The end.

This year I started designing holiday cards to send out to everyone based on this totally unrealistic but rather lovely vision of me sitting down and printing them out and trimming them and signing them and finding addresses and addressing envelopes with beautiful scripty handwriting and putting stamps on them and getting to the post office

Then I had a better idea. Just design the cards – which is the fun part anyway – and stop there. It’s the thought that counts, right?
So! I’m giving you all of my Christmas card designs, free to download and use as your very own holiday cards this year. YOU print them out and sign them and send them to all of your friends. Seems much more efficient this way; I figure someone is bound to send one to somebody on my list.

Here they are…

Download this card. PDF, 363 K. Set your printer to landscape, then trim to 8.5″ x 5.5 and fold vertically to fit an A2 envelope.

Download this card.PDF, 559 K. Set your printer to landscape, then trim to 8.5″ x 5.5 and fold vertically to fit an A2 envelope.

Download this card.PDF, 435 K. Set your printer to landscape, then trim to 8.5″ x 5.5 and fold vertically to fit an A2 envelope.

This one’s a little different. It’s a Photoshop file… so like, you’ll need Photoshop and stuff. There’s a little window for you to put a picture of your kid or your dog or yourself grinnin like a maniac. Shown here with my kid, just to give you the idea.

Download this card..psd, 5.3M. Set your printer to portrait, then trim to 8.5″ x 5.5 and fold horizontally to fit an A2 envelope.

And one last one, with no weirdness or cursewords. The baby Jesus would want you to use this one… not because he lacks a sense of humor, but because it’s smaller and prints two to a page. He is all about paper conservation I’m pretty sure.

Download this card.PDF, 762 K. Set your printer to portrait, then trim along crop marks to fit an A10 sized envelope. If your printer says “blah blah outside of printable area, some of the image will be cropped” just say yes that’s fine. Don’t resize to fit the paper.

Legal restrictions
Because it just wouldn’t be Christmas without the threat of litigation.
These are free, meaning free. Download them, print them, sign them, send them to your friends, clients, loved ones, senators, or whatever.

The only restrictions on their use are:
1. You must use the images in their entirity. Meaning, don’t pull pieces out or edit the files to remove text or change the images.

2. You must not alter my signature or logo.

3. You may not sell or make money off of these cards. If you need a custom card developed for you to resell, contact me and we’ll work something out. It’s easy, and I don’t charge much for drawing something that’s all yours. creative@tiffanyard.com

3b. But you can send them to your clients or business contacts. That doesn’t count as making money off of them. In fact, if you send your clients holiday cards with curse words in them there is a good chance that you’ll lose money. So I’m totally fine with that.

4. I drew the pictures, I took the photos, I wrote the copy. No one helped me plant the wheat or bake the bread. That means that all rights for all forms and all uses of these images all belong to me, forever and ever.

5. I make no guarantees that these files won’t suck and honestly, I probably won’t have time to help you much with printing and logistics although I will try to fix anything that’s wrong with the files themselves. Your best bet is to burn a CD and trot down to Office Max with any questions. Those guys rock.

6. You can’t sue me for anything bad that happens to you as a result of using these cards, including but not limited to:
Paper cuts
Running out of ink
Getting like really frustrated
Going to Hobby Lobby for envelopes and ending up spending a hundred dollars on random craft supplies for other projects you’ll never do
Your mom being upset because you sent her aged sister a holiday card with the MF word on it.

7. If you actually send these out, it’d be super cool if you left a comment here letting me know which one you used. I know I can look at the download stats, but that’s just not the saaaaame.

Yay cards!