A brief history of the slightly 3D Knock Knock letters. 1. One of our early tradeshows. 2. One of our later tradeshows. 3. And an even more recent tradeshow. 4. The stairs above our offices south entrance. 5. Our office mailroom.

At Knock Knock, we love our K’s. Letterform-wise they’re unique, with their splayed horizontal V’s branching out from military-erect I’s. Since ours repeat, they reduce to a convenient abbreviation: KK. One of the reasons I named the company Knock Knock is, as previously outlined in some of our marketing materials,* because of those graphically flanking K’s.

At the time and for the following ten years, however, I had no idea that K’s could kill. Or at least maim (this blog post is putting the “May” in “maim”; now that I’ve achieved official timeliness, I can move on).

I was at home. It was evening. The house was a mess. I put off doing anything about it for a few hours, but finally it was time to bust a move. And a move I busted, along with a body part. Despite my procrastination, once I started cleaning, I was a dervish who whirled. One of my goals over the last few months, for a variety of reasons, has been to reduce stress, to slow down, to not take on so much (the latter two being linked to the first). But I have two speeds: sitting and watching TV or moving fast, obsessed with velocity and efficiency.

After a little while, everything was basically clean. One of my knickknack shelves, however, was cleared of its objects. Earlier in the week, while my housekeeper was dusting, my three 3-by-3-inch cubes of the travertine marble used to build (or, more accurately, clad) the Getty Museum had fallen from the shelf and broken a ceramic bowl on the credenza below. Ofelia pointed out to me that the shelf was leaning downward and was therefore not adequately supporting its contents. As I finished my cleaning, I saw that she’d placed those objets not back on the inadequate shelf, but on the credenza below. Since I had moved the offending and heavy travertine cubes elsewhere, I thought, “Why ever did she not reload the shelf?” and took it upon myself to do so. These objects included a decommissioned plywood Knock Knock O and a decommissioned plywood Knock Knock K. ( As a general matter of collectibility, I like physical letterforms, and specifically I liked that these two spelled OK.)

Since our very first booth at the 2003 National Stationery Show, we’ve had our logo laser-cut into individual wood letters made of plywood, with a lovely exposed striped edge, that we’ve then painstakingly painted either white or orange. Those of us who’ve set up tradeshow booths or overseen office decor have had the misfortune of painting them and hanging them, each letter with its four-or-more keyhole mounts requiring perfectly positioned wall screws. The individual letters range from about 8 inches in height to perhaps 13, depending on their intended location. They’re about 0.75 inches thick. They’re not only iconic, they’re heavy.

My housekeeper was right—the shelf was inadequate. As soon as I hefted up the letters, they and a few other objets came crashing down. The K landed on my right foot. On one of its eight corners. With a force akin to that of a stiletto heel, i.e., with the same effective weight as an elephant, because, as we all readily know and discuss at cocktail parties, pressure equals force divided by surface area.

My foot, about to give birth to an alien.

My first response, if I recall correctly, was “motherfucker.” I figured this was one of those eye-watering whacked shin or stubbed toe moments that hurt like the aforementioned motherfucker but subside relatively quickly. I kept cleaning. While I was leaning down to pick the objects up from the floor, something caught my eye: a light blue hemisphere on top of my right foot, somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball.

I thought about sitting down at this point, but I remembered that earlier I’d set water and dishwashing soap to boil on the stove in an attempt to clean a recalcitrantly gunked-up pot. I hobbled into the kitchen and took the pot off the stove, poured it out partially, and then burned myself while attempting to scrub. That’s when I said to myself, “Stop. Just. Stop.”

The scene of the krime. 1. My knickknack shelves; please don't judge. Note that the top one is empty save for the feather-light origami pieces (constructed out of KK Pads, I might add). 2. The O and the K, ill-placed on the credenza under the thought that the shelf may be too unstable to hold them. 3. Three-quarters view of the kulprit K, held in order to demonstrate (a) the beautiful striped plywood edges; and (b) the lethality of its heft and corners.

It was about 9:00 p.m., and the last thing I wanted to do was go to the emergency room. When does anybody ever want to go to the emergency room? So I called a friend I thought might know what was going on. This swelling had literally ballooned. When I’ve broken bones or incurred sprains, the swelling is always much slower and more all-over. She suspected it might be a burst blood vessel. I did not go to the ER.

In the morning, the goiter had flattened and the black and blue had spread. To the ER I went. X-rays showed that nothing was broken, and the doctor confirmed that I had indeed burst a blood vessel and incurred a hematoma; the injury was to soft tissue. Over the course of the following week and a half, the swelling shifted across my foot, immobilizing my toes, and the black and blue traveled all the way to my ankle. I couldn’t put on a regular shoe for a couple weeks, and a month and a half later there’s still some pain at the point of impact. (By the way: I do not recommend doing a Google image search on “hematoma.”)

Why, you’re now no doubt asking if you’ve read this far, am I telling you this story, illustrated with gruesome pictures of my long-without-a-pedicure foot? Because it’s ironic (but in the incorrect, Alanis Morissette meaning of the word, not the gap-between-words-and-meaning literary definition). Because it’s so very me. But mostly because it’s ironic. And iconic. I don’t know that I’ve ever had an experience that was so simultaneously ironic and iconic: basically, during my partial leave of absence and my attempts to slow down, reduce stress, and not take on so much, the very essence of Knock Knock fell on and injured me.

1. A day later; please note that my toenails are not fungally yellow, but instead bear the remains of a months-old pale pink pedicure that looks yellow in this light. 2. A few days later. 3. A few days after that. Note that the bruise goes all the way up to my ankle; the difference in coloration between the two feet is not the result of lighting.

The lesson I’m drawing from this incident is mostly to slow down, because it’s when I move quickly that I make mistakes and have accidents. (FYI: I very rarely get sick; I have accidents and injuries and structural afflictions and surgeries.) But the kicker of it is that my speed mostly helps me in life. I’m really fast at a lot of things, so I get a lot done. Do I accept that speed works for me but periodically results in injuries and accidents (and not just of the physical kind), or do I slow down, reducing my efficiency and my life satisfaction (because I’m so impatient, slowing down is a nightmare) but possibly managing not to kill myself? I don’t have the answer to that. But I will tell you that the shelf has subsequently been fixed, and I have not moved the O and the K back up from their temporary position on the credenza. I’m also cleaning less. And that in itself is nothing if not slow-down-and-smell-the-roses self-improvement.

*Why the name Knock Knock? Well, first off, Knock Knock’s founder, Jen Bilik, had glued plastic letters that spelled out “KNOCK KNOCK” to the outside of her front door (and “WHO’S THERE” to the inside), and when she decided to start the company, she looked around and the words popped out at her. When she thought about it, she realized that “Knock knock” is a call-and-response command that invites a “Who’s there?” question. Knock Knock also reminds us of childhood, which we hope to honor with our glee, open-mindedness, and purity of purpose. Because Knock Knock is one word repeated twice, it lends itself nicely to the design of letterforms. Graphically it’s a palindrome, with consonants flanking a center O, the odd K at either side, and the N and C tweaking what might otherwise constitute cloying symmetry. Also, Jen thought it would be fun to answer the phone “Knock knock.” And by the way, we’re actually Who’s There Inc. D/B/A Knock Knock. Long story.

Knock Knock's namesake front door (which, oddly enough, I now live next door to).

Every once in a while, the time comes when nothing but a paradigm shift will suffice in charting the future of a company. For Knock Knock, I’m excited to say, that time has come. For ten years now we’ve been toiling in the salt mines of wit and clean, contemporary design (of course, sometimes with a retro flair). When I launched Knock Knock, in 2002, I was motivated in part by the fact that the commercial world had grown increasingly homogenized. Everything was designed for the lowest common denominator and it appeared to be illegal to have one’s own voice, especially in something for sale in the marketplace.

How gorgeous is this sky, and the sense of accomplishment one gets from standing on a not-quite-summit? Plus a simile about icebergs. I don’t know if we can achieve this kind of excellence, but we’re certainly going to try.

A thought that drove me in starting Knock Knock (other than not to suffer any clients) was that there had to be enough smart people in the world to support a small paper products company founded on the strength of the written word and good design. I was right, and it’s been an amazing run of blood, sweat, paper cuts, and success.

Now, however, when I look around at tradeshows, in boutiques, at Target, on Hallmark.com, all I see is voice. I see snark, I see humor, I see self-referentialism. A clean, bold contemporary design sensibility is almost the default setting now. I’d like for Knock Knock to take credit for this sea shift, and perhaps we are a small part of it (I am certain, for example, that the proliferation of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank humor was inspired by us), but responsibility doesn’t matter here. What matters is staying ahead of the game and distinguishing ourselves from crowd.

We don’t know who Brandon is, but we also miss his morning snuggles. How sweet are those hearts?

Today that means something very different from what it meant in 2002. It means a return to bunnies, bows, and cursive. It means swallowing our pride and using Papyrus, Comic Sans, and Remedy. It means being earnest and sometimes rhyming. It means poor typesetting. It means writing “everyday” when what we really mean is “every day.” But most of all, it means very little.

I have to say, I’m slightly relieved that we’ll be making this shift. It’s exhausting being smart and funny all the time. It’s eye-strain inducing to be kerning letters to set them just so. It’s frustrating having brainstorms and coming up with so little with which to continue making our mark.

I would like all of you to know how proud I am of what we’ve done over these years, when what we were doing was still original and unique (in our future incarnation, we will say “very unique”). We are most grateful to you, our FOKKers, for embracing us in all of our experimentation. But just because we’re changing doesn’t mean we won’t still be thinking of you. It just means we’ll be thinking of you in shades of purple, embossed cursive, and maybe a dash of glitter.

We would also like to make a return to the handcrafted. This blue dog, hand modeled from dog hair, lint, and old phonebooks, is eco-friendly as well as cute. Such an inspiration!

OMG, so kewt.

We still plan to keep the fun in functional, as with this rainbow of sand pails. They tote and they put a smile on your face!

As you know, we’ve tended to shy away from photography in favor of vector art and illustration. What a missed opportunity! Our twist will be in the context and substrate, like this photo on an actual tapestry!

Affluent people tend to spend more money on products. Affluent people are more likely to have second homes. What does that mean? Signage! Plus cute embroider pillows and golf paraphernalia.

I can’t wait to spray some perfume on this stationary and write to my BFF.

Speaking of cute embroidered pillows . . . We’ve always loved a good pun, but now we’re going to embrace bad, trite puns as well. We’re inside ourselves with joy!

Finally, nothing we do in the future would be complete without the Bible. Did you know it’s the bestselling book of all time? Bible + affirmations + cursive + huge = the new Knock Knock.

What a great segue. With our new identity, it’s only fitting that we should end with a biblical reference: “And on the first day of the fourth month, God created April Fools.”

KISS—“Keep it simple, stupid.” Not my forte. I like things that have complexity and interest to them, and you may already know that one of my mottos (and I say “my” because successive Knock Knock writers and editors are delightfully more terse than I am) is “Why use fewer words when you could use more?” Even if you don’t know that, you may have noticed that my blog posts are way too long. Way.

Our turned-out-to-be-too-complex contribution to a calendar consisting of one page/month each from different designers. Do you get it? If not, check out the asterisk at the end of the post.

Years ago—maybe seven—we were asked to contribute a month to a calendar that would comprise twelve individual cards. The design was to embody that month in some way; we were assigned March. I thought what we did was so very clever, and I still love it. A huge version of it, mounted onto foam core, looms above the office’s “editorial horseshoe” (what we call the place where the KK wordsmiths sit).

Nobody got it.

Perhaps you wouldn’t characterize our calendar page as unsimple, or as complex, but the mental leap from visual to verbal certainly turned out to be. And therein lies one of Knock Knock’s continual balancing acts: we want to make products that are as smart, unique, and non-dumbed-down as possible, but if they’re too smart, unique, and non-dumbed-down, enough people probably won’t get the concept to sustain it in the marketplace. Another example of this: we frequently hear from potential PR outlets,  “We love it, but it won’t read on the page” or “We love it, but it’ll require too much explanation.”

The best products hit both marks—smart, conceptual, and accessible. To me the Personal Library Kit (our only product still in print from our very first release, in 2002!) is an exercise in perfection there.

Die-hard FOKKers do sometimes love these more complicated, non-selling products. They’re certainly some of my favorites. But if they don’t sell, we don’t pay the rent. In some ways they’re more like collectibles than products. At times I notice our list veering more toward the broad, the gag, the ba-dump-bump, and I know we need to get some über-smart stuff in there to balance out the WTFs. But it’s a difficult juggling act—what sells vs. what you love.

We apologize for the overcomplexity of this concept, name, and packaging. But from it we learned, “The more complicated the product, the simpler the name and presentation have to be.”

We came up with a bit of a rule of thumb for this in reference to our Fete-a-Tete party packs. We think these are splendid, smart, and fun—just add a bottle of wine and you’ve got an instant party. We also love the graphic design of the packaging and feel it’s very Knock Knock, what with the how-to infographic-like drawings and all. But people don’t get what they are at a glance, something we learned early on when we had to explain them at some length in our tradeshow booths. From this product, we concocted a KK rule: “The more complicated the product, the simpler the name and presentation have to be.” With Fete-a-Tete, that means we should have used photography on the front, showing an explanatory vignette, and we should have called them “Party Kits for Two” or some such.

We refer constantly during works-in-progress meetings and in orienting new creative employees to the three-second rule (no, not the one that involves dropping food on the floor). Our three-second rule is that someone has to understand the basic essence of a product in three seconds. A more complex version of that is that they have to get it in three stages: (a) from across the store; (b) from right in front of the product; and (c) when they then pick up the product. You don’t get to B without A, and you don’t get to C without B. You have to imbue the packaging with clarity and appeal for each of those three stages. People inexperienced in product design will often say, “But they’ll understand what it is when they pick it up and read the text on the back!” Ah, the innocence of those who’ve never designed product.

I really want to go into the over-complexity and at-least-120-second requirement of one of my favorite products we ever did, the Wishing Kit, which was included in our first release, in 2002 (since this years marks our tenth anniversary!), but I’m going to take my own KISS advice and hold that for another post.

In the meantime, I’m trying really hard to bring KISS into my own life for March 2012. I’ve actually just started a personal leave of absence to attend to a few top-secret personal projects as well as focus on some work-related writing projects. Since one of the main goals of the leave is to bring down my stress level, KISS could very well be my friend. How to KISS when you’re juggling both work and the rest of your life? I haven’t solved that one yet. But for all of us, a little dash of KISS would probably be an improvement—at least for March 2012.

*The calendar page illustrates the saying “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.”

Starting this month, we will be publishing our Reality Rhymes greeting card series—one for each week of love-fest February (and other scattered holidays throughout the year). We understand if you’ll want to share our rhymes with friends, family, and lovers—and we wholly support it, if not insist on it. You can also follow our fresh Tumblr, as it plays hub to original Knock Knock content, ready for reblogging. And as always, sharing posts on Facebook or retweeting on Twitter is surely welcomed.

The Reality Rhymes logo on the card's back cover. We put a bird on it.

Is it only us, or do other people barf at those treacly cursive swirly glittery embossed schmaltzy sentiment cards in the grocery store? Those ones with the ridiculous poems that, were they to really mean something, the giver should have written him- or herself? The ones that use words like “hope” and “favorite” and “Jesus Christ” or “God” (but not in the swearing way)? We’re thinking it’s not just us. And we were really thinking it wasn’t just us when we released a new line of greeting cards called Reality Rhymes in 2006.

But they sure didn’t sell. Just like I assume that people didn’t get my joke if they don’t laugh in response (vs. thinking that perhaps it just wasn’t funny), I still think the Reality Rhymes cards are kick-ass—dark, funny, and true, but all in a cursive against an airbrushed picture of unattainably scenic perfection. I thought that people would buy the cards as jokes (and some of them for real), but apparently, for the most part, people actually buy cards to give to other people, damn them. Another thought was that visually the line was too on the nose—people looked at them quickly and didn’t realize they were parodies rather than the real barfy thing.

Maybe we’ll gather them together in a book one day. In the meantime, we’re thinking they should totally go viral. That is, with your help.

PS: I wanted to have a tagline on the backs of these babies saying, “When you care enough to send the very worst” (you know, like Hallmark), but the lawyers thought it was too risky.

This week’s Reality Rhyme:

For our weekly “In It for the Money” feature, we’ll be introducing you to the kick-ass Knock Knockers who make everything go, from creative to sales to logistics to . . . everything! Note—everybody answers the first five questions. After that, they have about fifteen wild-card questions from which to choose.

My office, messier than I would like.

1. Name and title? Jen Bilik, CEO. Also, Jen Bilik CEO and founder. Also, Jen Bilik, head honcho.

2. Originally from? Berkeley, California. I was born in Chicago while my dad was in graduate school but we returned to Berkeley, where my parents had attended university, by the time I was ten months old. I like to say I was “_____ and raised in Berkeley.”

3. What the hell do you do all day? Really good question. I don’t really have a specific job or set of duties. Okay, I kind of do, but it’s all over the place. I’m involved in everything at Knock Knock concerning strategy and vision, which boils down to meetings and special projects. So I’m either in meetings or hammering out outlines, etc., for the special projects. I tend to lead or spearhead all our new initiatives. I give a lot of opinions. Sometimes I still write stuff. Also, I pretty much oversee all marketing, because we still don’t have a senior person dedicated to that area.

4. Favorite thing about working at Knock Knock? The feeling of being at a creative think-tank, which was one of my goals starting out—to work with smart, driven, constant-improvement-oriented people who were intellectually curious and would engage in robust debate and from whom I could learn. Also, the opportunity to be myself in all my irreverent and crass splendor.

5. Favorite hobbies outside work? I love to watch TV. I really do love it a lot. I like high-quality dramas and low-quality reality shows. I also read a lot—with books, mostly fiction, because I read in bed for about an hour and a half before falling asleep every night, and nonfiction stimulates me too much (I just want to take notes and think about how to use the information). I’m an avid New York Times and People magazine consumer and overall reader of essays and long articles. I also sew (little embroideries, mostly), knit, garden, and take the dogs on walks. I guess seeing friends isn’t really a hobby. I do that too sometimes.

6. Did your professional life exist before Knock Knock? Surprisingly little! I’ve really had one real job outside Knock Knock, at Rizzoli International Publications, where I started as an editorial assistant and left as an editor, all inside three years. I’ve had a ton of part-time and summer jobs, and after Rizzoli I was a freelance editor for six years before starting Knock Knock. So it’s no surprise that I’m not really housebroken.

Me in my office, messier than I would like.

7. Favorite Knock Knock product? Over time, it may be some of the ones that are no longer with us, because I feel nostalgic for them, and because we put time and effort and care and idiosyncracy into them that we can’t quite do in the same way anymore. The Multiple-Choice Correspondence Notebook. The How to Find True Love poster. The Wheels o’ Wisdom. I like the really smart ones, the ones that contain intellectual Easter eggs for those who care to find them. Current products? Probably the books—The Complete Manual of Things that Might Kill You, The Convert’s Bible, the Lines for All Occasions series. Of the newly released Spring 2012 products, I’m partial to the Kids’ Passports—one for foods to try, the other for physical activities. Big Words Flashcards are pretty great, and I had a strong hand in the journal It’s a Dog’s Life, and of course we all know how I feel about dogs. Just wait until you see a big surprise release we’re about to spring on you—that’s been my baby for the past nine months. And Fall 2012? I just hope you’re seated when that email blitz hits your inbox.

8. Pet peeves? I am the queen of pet peeves. And really, it only hurts me, and it doesn’t improve society any, because it appears that when I give drivers dirty looks they don’t learn from the experience and change their ways. A lot of driving pet peeves. Inconsideration in general. Think about other people, people! Leave your grocery cart in the middle of the lane? What the hell are you thinking? Inefficiency and stupidity bug me, too. Bad spelling. “Your” vs. ”you’re” confusions and the like. Really, the more revealing question would be to ask me what I don’t have pet peeves about.

9. Any hidden talents? I grew up playing classical piano with some degree of seriousness and dedication. In my house I have the Steinway upright that my also-piano-playing uncle bought for me when I was about twelve, replacing the off-tune-by-a-whole-step-with-nonworking-pedals piano that came with the house when my parents bought when I was one. I still love to play, but I only like to work on pieces until I can technically play them well enough to enjoy them. It’s not an area in which I exercise my perfectionism. I do attribute my facility with both left- and right-brain work to my piano training—apparently if you start playing piano, especially classical piano, early enough, you change your brain structurally. Also, it has helped me type really fast.

10. Favorite website? NYTimes.com. Sometimes I wonder whether I should diversify my sources, then I think, “Nah.” Mind you, I read nothing about politics or international affairs. It’s all culture and arts and business and style and health and science. I hate politics—just lots of reprehensible people arguing and showboating.

11. Food or drink you couldn’t live without? Red Vines. It used to be you couldn’t get them west of Nevada or Utah or some such. People compare them to Twizzlers, but Twizzlers are a petroleum by-product. Nasty nastorama. My parents used to send them to me in college care packages. I only like the semi-single-serving kind in the flat boxes. The ones in the big round plastic tub are too soft because the tub holds in too much moisture. The ones in the cellophane bags are thicker and don’t have the right texture. I still don’t know, however, whether the softer ones (there’s variation even in the one packaging type I like) are more or less fresh than the stiffer, chewier ones (which I prefer). At movies, I still like to drink Diet Coke through Red Vines straws and then eat the Red Vines after they’ve been semi-frozen in the drink’s ice, and the outside of the licorice has been slightly liquified.

12. What advice would you give your past self? You were thinner and prettier than you thought, and you could have made some much better choices in men.

It’s pretty telling (but hopefully not for all of 2012) that my monthly Head Honcho Hello is late. I had such plans for productivity over what seemed like an endless work break, from Christmas Eve to January 3. Of course, me being me, part of the thrill was being able to cross some things off my work to-do list. It’s sad, really, how much satisfaction I get out of doing that in my supposed off-time—until I don’t.

And I thought I’d be getting all these things done while I followed through on my “vacation” plans, which included no fewer than eight days spent with visiting family (fortunately, I like these particular relatives). I’m always advising people not to overpromise and underdeliver, yet time and again, and most especially with myself, that’s what I do.

What am I thinking to create a daily to-do list (yes, I divy everything up onto particular days) that (a) would take a good 18 hours to execute fully; and (b) doesn’t account for any interruptions, meetings, or potty breaks? I’ve gotten much better at managing the delays back to the people who are expecting things from me, but I could still use some work in that area.

When I talk about this at work, the people to whom I’m delivering something (repeatedly) late often say, “Oh, it’s okay—you have so much on your plate!” This is true. But having a lot on your plate doesn’t mean you can’t realistically assess what you have on your plate, managing expectations and deadlines as you go. I feel especially guilty because I feel I’m supposed to be setting an example. How can I ask others to do things if I don’t do them myself?

Oddly, there’s such optimism among those of us who overpromise and underdeliver—we so want to get it done that way, in that timeframe! But being unrealistic benefits no one and puts the entire team in a constant state of fire-drill mode. Craig and Trish and Jim and Carolyn are great at being more realistic in plotting out project schedules. You should see our master product development schedule—it’s got some 200 projects on it at any given time. Believe me—I am so not the one to make those trains run on time.

But there’s a role for the overoptimistic Jen Biliks of this world, too. Sometimes things need to be goosed to run a little quicker. Sometimes the more cautious among us need to be pushed to produce faster and better than they ever thought possible. I once saw a Craigslist ad that said simply, “Visionary seeks functionary.” Craig and Trish and Jim certainly have both visionary and functionary qualities, but I’m definitely the one who says “We can do it! We can so finish that book in two weeks! We can so release that thing a season early! We can so add to the product list! We can so introduce a new product line! We can so implement a new server file-naming protocol.” And to their credit, except when they convince me it’s a really bad idea and will screw up too many other things we’ve got going, they always make it happen.

I think you’ll see what seems like more of the eyes-bigger-than-stomach Jen Bilik than the sane and rational others at Knock Knock this year. Our Spring 2012 (to launch on the website in early February!) and Fall 2012 releases kick some serious ass with their breadth and depth. Not to mention a top-secret entirely new thing you’ll be hearing more about very soon. But just because it looks like we would have had to be out of our minds to take all this on doesn’t mean, in this case, that it was a case of the crazy lady pushing everybody ragged. Nope—this was a team effort, a team commitment, and it will be a team success.

Rest assured, however, that I will soon be pushing everybody to do something else that seems, on the face of it, patently undoable, because, much as I continually try to improve, this overoptimistic, overpromise-and-underdeliver leopard isn’t changing her spots anytime soon.

Oh—and happy new year.

December is a very special holiday month for me and Knock Knock—because it’s Maisie’s birthday. It’s the whole month rather than a single day because when I adopted her from the South Central LA Animal Shelter, in February 2000, I was told she was eight weeks old.

Sweet Maisie as a puppy, soon after her homecoming. I don’t know what was up with those awful streaks in my hair, but I do know I was in the middle of organizing or housework or something.

All the young puppies were kept together in one kennel area, and as I watched them, Maisie stood out. The other puppies were either bullies or fearful wallflowers, the latter almost catatonic, shivering in the corner as the bullies picked on them. Maisie was the only one who was neither. She had this sense of self-possession that has carried through in her character to this day. She would play and wrestle happily with the bullies, but if they started to get rough or bratty, she would just walk away without engaging. And she’d approach the poor terrified pups and lick them or lie next to them.

I asked to take her for a test drive, and when she was put in my arms (only 15 pounds—now she’s 75), her whole body wagged and wriggled as she exuberantly licked my face. Then, all at once, her whole body went trusting and limp and her head plopped decisively onto my shoulder as if she’d snuggled in for the long haul.

I found the Knock Knock office complex while I was walking with Maisie. I’d just decided to put aside the book I’d been working on for a couple years and make a go of this Knock Knock thing. In December 2001, when Maisie turned one, I signed a lease to start in February 2002, which made Knock Knock real for me. Maisie was the charmer of the complex, playing and romping with her favorite soccer ball in the parking lot when we worked outside.

When we did portraits of the team for Knock Knock’s first catalog, Maisie posed as well. I always think of this as her nude picture because she’s not wearing her collar. Maisie was one and a half here.

Now Maisie’s eleven, and Knock Knock’s almost ten. We have a few dates from which to choose Knock Knock’s anniversary: January 1, 2001, is the date of our incorporation. We started work in earnest in March or April. Our first products came out in October 2001. I personally think of our anniversary as starting in March and lasting through October.

Maisie was featured prominently in our early catalogs and website, in particular her formal portrait for our first catalog in which she looks breathtakingly dignified (FYI, like me, she’s never really enjoyed being photographed). Paco came along six years later, and while he’s an important part of life here, Maisie’s the heart and soul of the place. Maisie’s just one of those special dogs. She’s got wise eyes and somehow gets the ineffable “it.” Everyone notices that about her. And Maisie’s starting to get really old, and it’s breaking my heart.

I also can’t believe that Knock Knock’s going to be ten. We were the young upstarts for so long, and now within the gift industrial complex we’re almost part of the establishment. With both Maisie and Knock Knock, as with raising children, the saying comes to mind “The days crawl by but the years they fly.” Every day at Knock Knock has an intensity and density to it that make every last few months feel like longer ago than they ever really are, but oh my god, where did the years go? Like in Joni Mitchell’s “The Circle Game,” one of my favorite camp songs (Camp Kee Tov was pretty comprehensive in its musical repertoire), the teenage boy is told, “Take your time. It won’t be long now / ’Til you drag your feet to slow the circles down.”

Maisie today, with her whitening muzzle. She’s always loved to wriggle under the covers—every morning after she eats her breakfast. Often she’s all the way under, head and all.

So even though we’re supposed to think about the holidays during the holidays (and sell some products—buy, kind readers, buy!), the end of the year is also about endings and upcoming new beginnings. I find myself contemplating what it is to lead more of an institution than a scrappy startup, how to keep the freshness but combine it with greater reach and more business acumen and sophistication.

And with my dear sweet Maisie, I’m pre-mourning what I still have (an awful trait of mine—I seem to have no capability to live in the present). Her arthritis slows her down and her hindquarters have to be lifted into the car. She’s had a variety of health problems, any one of which could be her downfall. Her muzzle is almost completely white. Her personality has evolved as she’s gotten older—she’s kind of crotchety now, while still being the sweetheart she’s always been. She’s really insistent about the things she wants, including letting me know she’d like me to take away the bone that Paco’s chewing and give it to her or get Paco out of her bed. She’s been with me through almost all of my thirties, and all of Knock Knock, which for many years was no easy thing, so her loving constancy really meant a lot to me.

Though I am woefully prone to nostalgia (“hypochondria of the heart,” as someone characterized it)—even before something has ended—my pre–New Year’s vow* for Maisie, for Knock Knock, and for as much of life as I can muster, is this: enjoy where we are at this moment, because soon enough I’ll miss where we’ve been.**

*It’s unlikely to work, mind you, but I’ll definitely try.

**This is a little corny for me and Knock Knock, but Maisie’s one of the few forces in my life that can bring me to corn.

We might as well have that key.

“Cyber Monday might have started as a made-up occasion to give underdog e-commerce sites jealous of Black Friday a day of their own, but it has become an undeniably real thing—surprising even the people who invented it.”

I love etymologies of everyday things. Like the slightly inane phrase “Have a nice day,” for example.

I also love the New York Times and get all too much of my information from it. Here’s my enlightenment for the day:

Black Friday: “A carnival of capitalism, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving, when retailers across the country dangle deep discounts to lure customers out of bed. Black Friday is also the official beginning of the holiday-buying frenzy. For stores, the Friday after Thanksgiving can be the highest sales day of the year and is a barometer for what they need to do the rest of the season. The name itself is a reference to profit, because retailers historically “moved into the black,” or became profitable for the year, on that day.

Cyber Monday: “Cyber Monday was dreamed up in 2005 by Shop.org as a marketing ploy to kick off online holiday shopping. More people had high-speed Internet at work, the thinking went, the easier to shop with. But the day was far from the biggest shopping day of the holiday season, coming in at no. 12, according to comScore.” And: “‘Just like Thanksgiving weekend shopping is a ritual in America, when people go with their families to look for deals, as soon as they go to the office on Monday they look online,’ said Sucharita Mulpuru, an e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research. ‘It’s almost ceremonial.’”

Of course, too much of a good thing never being enough, more people than me are dreaming up additional days to spendabrate:

Merry Monday: “The Monday before Thanksgiving, when Gap offered 35 percent off everything on its website.”

Sofa Sunday: A nickname given to the Sunday after Thanksgiving by Catalog Spree, an iPad app with retailers’ catalogs, from the prediction that people would shop on tablets on their sofas.

Mobile Sunday: Coming soon. “PayPal christened the second Sunday in December, and free shipping day on Dec. 16, brought to you by FreeShipping.org.”

Red Tuesday: The day “the Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies warns will hit shoppers who go into debt on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.”

On this venerable Cyber Monday, of course we’d love for you to do all your shopping at KnockKnockStuff.com or any of our phenomenal other online retailers, such as the ever amazing PerpetualKid.com.

PS—Late-breaking update to this post: because nothing exists until it’s an infographic, here’s one on the history of Cyber Monday.

Oh, so gosh-darned cute. Who doesn’t love an iconic yellow smiley face? But wait—where the hell does it come from? Read on, grasshopper.

The original concept of Knock Knock included something we were calling a “catazine” or “magalog”—at the time, we didn’t realize this was a real thing. In addition to creating product for sale, we were going to put out a magazine, a publication that had only one advertiser: us. I quickly realized that (a) creating and distributing products might be a lot of work; (b) creating and distributing a magazine might be a lot of work; (c) doing both might kill us, or at least me, because I’m just that weak; and (d) it might be better to start with the money-making endeavor (and lord knows that wasn’t going to be the magazine, no matter the hybrid word).

The compromise was that we included content in our catalogs, from quotations to false facts and stats to—gasp, I know this will surprise you based on this blog—essays. Of course in around 2007 or 2008 we stopped doing that because we got jaded and it was kind of too much work. But before that? I think our catalogs had some extra-special pleasure in them.

Our Spring 2004 catalog may be my favorite catalog we’ve ever done. It was horizontal in format and oh-so-cute. We won some design awards for it. It had three full pages of something for nothing: a history of the phrase “Have a nice day” and a special Knock Knock Kidz Korner. Enjoy!

The best history of “Have a nice day” you’ll ever read.

You’re welcome to print this out and fill it out while you’re waiting for the dentist.

You’re welcome to print this out and fill it out while you’re waiting for the dentist.