The Christmas card you won't get

Ever have one of those days?  Let me tell you about mine.  It is Christmas.  That being interpretted means "Mother is stressed".  The top priority on my to do list is "Get the Christmas cards out".  No problem.  I have an awesome photo of the family at the wedding.  It is one of the only pictures that has us all in it.  Carefully I prepare the card until it reaches near perfection.  At this point, I don't know what's about to hit me . . . but I'm about to find out.  Joyfully I push the send button to have the photo card transferred to the place of origination.  Check that baby off the "to do" list.  I was feeling happy and, yes, I'll admit it, even a little smug.  Then I got a call from the place of origination.  They had determined the photo was copyrighted.  Copyrighted?!?!  It was scanned into my computer by me.  How could it be copyrighted?!?!  Slyly I asked how they can tell.  They could not give out that information.  The information that they could give me was that it is a felony to reproduce a copyrighted picture without written consent, and I can be fined $20,000 for each photo printed.  That was a little bit more than I wanted to pay for Christmas cards.  I needed a copyright release.  I franticly called Erin Kay and asked her about it.  She said it wasn't going to fly.  She didn't have one and didn't think the photographer would give her one without paying a 'large sum of money'.  A large sum of money was also more than I wanted to pay for Christmas cards.  I thought maybe I could take a pictrue of the original but then the whole 'copyright' monster reared it's ugly head.  If they can tell by a photo scanned into a computer, certainly those pros can catch a photo of a copyrighted photo.  Besides, I didn't want Hirashio informing me that I was committing a felony.  After all, how many chances do they give ya?  I didnt want to find out.  Maybe I could find some photos of the wedding that I took.  Ya, right.  Who takes pictures while the photographer is snapping them?  At this point, I could see the Christmas clock ticking away.  Precious minutes and hours being wasted.  I had to get those cards out, but how?!?!  Part of growing up is admiting that you've been beat.  It's true. And I'm way grown up.  I'm done fighting.  What you see is not what you will get.   If you normally get a card from me, this year you will get some lame thing; a home taken pictures in a ghastly collage thrown together to form an appalling card!  Atrocious!  I'm sorry but the copyright monster has won! And even tho this picture is a little fuzzy, you get the general idea.  It's the best your gonna get.  After all, it is copyrighted!!