Fivesome For Collab

So glad that I can text my old friends 

such vital information.

Do you ever write letters? I’m in pretty regular contact with the friends that I grew up with, thanks to group iMessages and them not being around me frequently enough to remember how annoying I am. It’s been pretty delightful figuring out how to translate my different friendships from childhood to adulthood. While I love the convenience of only being a text away from my old friends, sometimes it’s nice to put in a little more effort so that they remember that I’m more than words on a screen. Unfortunately I don’t make this happen as often as I wish it would. I’m THE laziest pen pal because I never start writing a letter until I have something nice to send it on, and then it can take me days to walk to the post office to send it. Which is even lazier than it first sounds, because the post office is about 30 steps away from my apartment. Maybe even less.

Anyway, I’ve been trying to start writing letters with my friend Amy for a long time. I’m also supposed to have sent her my Christmas present, but I put it off for so long because I wanted her to have a letter with it since I would be sending her mail anyway. I mean, are Christmas presents like wedding gifts? I have a whole year to send them right? But I finally got it all together a few days ago, so she can have a happy middle of the year present if the “one year” rule doesn’t hold up.

My gift for Amy is a “friendship sweater.” Last spring, I had a dream that I had a cropped, fuzzy sweater that I shared with Amy. After telling her about my dream, we decided that we should have an actual friendship sweater, so we both started looking casually. I don’t remember if we agreed that the sweater should just happen to us or if we were looking for something more specific, but I know we wanted something more in the pink/salmon family. Then, last December, I found Her.

Meet Elaine.

She was soft, she was cropped, and she wasn’t conventionally beautiful. I saw Her hanging there and felt like she was already ours. She was kind of edgy, and she was kind of ugly. She was pretending to be an alligator, but she couldn’t hide the fact that she was really a soft, fuzzy sweater. I’m hoping that when Amy gets Her tomorrow or the next day, she likes Her. I mailed Her a couple days ago, and in the envelope, I also enclosed this notebook, where I wrote Amy a letter.

It's like, personal or something. Damn, our hundred year old floors look nice.

My plan is that we can write our letters in the notebook and send it back and forth with the sweater. I won’t have any excuses about not being able to find cute paper, so it should hopefully work well. In finally getting that whole package together, I’ve realized that it really is important to me that we start writing to each other. I’m beyond thankful that I still have that friendship, and friendships like that friendship, and I’m also thankful that I’m at a point in my life where I have the time to honor that with letters. I love my friends and I want them to know it and it’s only right that if I have an opportunity to show them, I use it. Now if only there was a way to make me get off my butt and walk those 30 steps to the post office…