I seem to spend a lot of time having my blood removed these days, so I’ve become a connoisseur of out of date magazines. Imagine my surprise when I picked up an old copy (September or October) of Real Simple magazine and read this helpful advice: “order your holiday stamps now so you get something cute and cheery and don’t get stuck with something dreadful like American Bats on your holiday cards!” OK, I may have added “dreadful” to the sentence because I’m reconstructing it from memory.

What’s wrong with the American Bats series? I, in fact, ordered my stamps in October just so I could make sure I could get the American Bat stamps for my holiday cards. In fact, they only had one roll of 100 left so I still got stuck with the second roll being creepy snowman stamps.*

I am clearly not the intended audience of Real Simple magazine.