It's called an address book

This morning finds me finally working on holiday cards. There's no mention of Christmas or New Year's on them so they can go out after Christmas but not appear to be late.

It took a long time to get the newsletter finished and the cards organized. Everything takes me a long time. This particular task requires a lot of horizontal space so I can lay out letters, cards, envelopes, address book, and laptop. So far, so good, until my husband decides to vacuum around me. This pisses me off. I want to say, "If you feel an overwhelming compulsion to do housework, Hazel, go wash dishes, clean the bathroom, or do your laundry. There are many hours in the day when you can run the vacuum cleaner away from my concentration-intensive task. I don't understand why you need to do the noisiest housework possible around my head or why it needs to be done right this minute."

This is something that drives me crazy about my husband. If I find a task of my own in the basement, he will come down and start working in the basement. If I go outside to work by myself, he's there within ten minutes, doing some non-essential task that gets in my way. Sometimes I just want to be alone with no noise, no interruption, and no company at all. Argh!

I hate addressing cards. I loathe this task, but since people keep moving, it takes just as long to update a database and print labels. Hand addressing it is. I need to keep track of who moved. I need to remember who gets a card and who couldn't care less. Who will notice, who won't.

I have an address book. It is low-tech, but it works in any setting, it requires no electricity, there is no software involved, and it's easy to update. I do this. I actually update my address book on a regular basis. It is a mystery to me when we get mail sent to our old address. We've lived here for four-and-a-half years. We're in the phone book. Why don't people at least find a logical place to tuck away change-of-address announcements? Why???

This brings me back to my husband. I've been asking for his address book so I can send cards to his siblings. He kept stalling. In frustration, I went online, but there's no way to know if a listing is current. "Husband, does your brother live on Maple Lane or Leafy Elm Court?"
"I'm not sure."
"You were just there six months ago."
"Well, look on Google Street View. That's what I do. I know what the house looks like."
"Are you saying that you've looked up your siblings' addresses repeatedly using the address and Google pictures, but you never bothered to actually record the address anywhere?"
"Well, I know what the house looks like, and it only takes a few minutes to look it up online when I need the information."
"Do you have your family's phone numbers written down anywhere or saved in your cell phone?"
"No. I just look it up online."

What this means. First of all, husband's brother and sister live in rural areas where Google Street View is never going to go. Can he really tell from the satellite picture of a roof in a forest that it's the right address?

Second...I must wait for husband to stop dicking around with unnecessary housework so he can be available to look up his sibling's addresses on the Internet. (He just went outside to play with the dog, BTW.) He will forget to do this until I nag and nag, and then he will profess that he's just not sure.

When we sent out wedding invitations, I had a stack of five for his family that went unmailed until about a week before the event. By then, it was really just a formality since all of the information had been given by telephone. In disgust, I put the invitations on husband's dresser and said, "Here you go. I know your family wants these, but at this point, you'll have to take care of getting them into the mail. I have other things I need to get done." I'm pretty sure that his invitations arrived while his family was boarding a plane at Newark. Of course, by doing it this way with holiday cards every year, I never get the addresses myself, so I can't put them in my address book. When husband's brother moved last year, he emailed the new information to my husband. My husband purges his read email weekly, never thinking he might have information there that he should archive.

Why do people do this? An address book is so simple to use. Even if you're too lazy to write new addresses in the book, take the little return address labels or the paper torn-off of the email and throw them in the book until the day, month, or year comes when there's time to record the information into the book. Or use tape and just tape it in the book.

Here is what will irritate me now: These still unaddressed cards will sit on the kitchen counter until April when I will finally just throw them away.

To review:
My method: Collect new addresses. Put into address book. Keep book updated.
Husband's method: Delete emails, throw out cards that come in the mail. When an address or phone number is needed, turn on computer. Get online. Use an online phone directory to look for everyone in the state who has the same name as the one needed. Narrow it down to most likely listings. Go onto Google Maps. Enter addresses and see if the Street View or satellite pictures look familiar. If not, send email to verify address. Wait days for a reply. When the reply comes, address the envelope, delete the email without printing it out or writing the address and phone so it can all be repeated next time.

Maybe my method is just ridiculously unreasonable.