Clump #85:  Go through, sort out, and recycle catalogs.

The catalogs are coming — the catalogs are coming!  My 30-day, 30-clump, 30-post challenge: Project Enjoy Christmas continues with one of the most vexing problems of the season.  Just when my mind gets overloaded with extra holiday planning, the volume of mail explodes with catalogs.  Vendors I never hear from the rest of the year know I’m a soft touch for their products in November and December.  But at a certain point I become overwhelmed and let them pile up.  Here’s the current collection, de-clumped from the study where I had guiltily stashed them:

The job: sort through; recycle ones I will not be ordering from; order — now — the gift items I’ve identified.  Trouble comes when I see a good idea, and even with a turned-down page corner, I put the catalog aside and it falls into the void of piled up paper.

Plus, I get distracted.  I have a tendency to look through catalogs and realize I’m wondering about the models rather than the products the company is advertising.  “They’re really featuring her more than the others,” I think. “Are the other models jealous?”  This season’s Lands’ End catalog featured a few models with relationship stories.  Maybe I’m not the only one who wants to know the scoop about these beautiful people.  A mother and daughter pairing was on the cover, in the photo above.

Also, this caption accompanied the photo below: “Colin is used to having his sisters, Anna & Adrienne, put him through the ropes.  But he never expected his wife, Ashley, to take their side.”  I’ll never get through the pile at this rate, Lands’ End!

And then there’s my annual letter from my friend, Robert Redford, on behalf of Sundance.  When I was in my teens, I was driving with my sister one day and we saw Robert Redford driving the other way. Really.  It was over in a flash: “Was that–?!”  “Yes!!”

So, naturally, I feel a kinship to him as I read his poetic (cryptic?) holiday letter:

I think he’s telling me to go outside and experience the wonders of nature, but the letter is prefacing a whole lot of beautiful stuff I can buy to clutter up my home.

I did go outside and this is what the sunset looked like this evening.  And the birds were singing.  Thanks, Bob.