Generosity

This is me with my friend Gabriella at Cafe Royale in 2004. Gabree and I became friends as second graders in 1977 when we bonded over having the same Holly Hobby lunchbox. And she lives in San Francisco now, too.

As I briefly mentioned in an earlier post, I was in Gabree's neighborhood on Saturday evening, so I stopped by her apartment to say hello. What I discovered when I got there was that she had a belated birthday present for me... which was a little embarrassing for me since Gabree's birthday had been a few days earlier, and I had arrived empty-handed. Mine is in December. But the point is that my very generous friend had selected the perfect gift for me.

The thing is, I love cards. As in, greeting and note. I send about 100 Christmas cards every holiday season. Literally. And in recent years, I have become queen of the thank you card. I even sometimes will send my friends cute little cards just to tell them they're fabulous. Because in this age of quick email, IM's, text messages and voice mails on the run, who wouldn't want a goody hand delivered to them by a U-S government employee? We all like to get snail mail, so I like to spread the love that way. Well, the very sweet Gabree got me personalized note cards with my name and a sassy little pink shoe on them! It may not seem like much to you, but I can't wait to start writing stuff on them and sending them out.

And if that isn't enough, my former co-worker Liz has these two really cool part time jobs where she gets free books. That's right: free brand new books! And over the years I've known her, she has always set aside books for me that she thinks I'll like. She'll even order extra copies for me if she thinks I'll like a book she wants to keep. She does this for a lot of people, but I'm certainly glad I'm one of them. She just gave me this really cool looking novel set in 1940's Hollywood. I'm not done with Prep yet (which, by the way, is getting a little slow-- we get it, the main character feels out of place at her snotty prep school, resulting in teen angst; is she going to do anything interesting about it?), but once I'm finished, I'm going to tear into this one.

The point of this post is that my generous friends are very good to me. Maybe I should send Liz a thank note written on a personalized note card....