march thirty

I know that in my life I have not been faced with many of the unfortunate realities of life. Often times this weighs down on me when I look at others close to me who struggle with those realities from time to time. Many times I feel like I don't have much to say or I fear I may say the wrong thing or step into a place I am not welcome. The only thing I know how to do without fear of doing it wrong is to make someone's day a little bit happier.

This time of the year is not the easiest for bez. We will just leave it at that. I don't like to talk to her about things I don't know much about so I decided, as the beginning of my extraordinary year, that I would do my best to turn her week, or at least a day of it, around.

In our friendship we send a lot of mail and we buy each other stupid things. Most of the time this mail is pointless and says stuff like "you're the best" and the things are random things we find at the store that remind each other just how equally matched the two of us are.

After leaving Dallas and realizing her not so easy time was coming up, I decided to send her a package. Will she use all of the things I sent her? Absolutely not. Will she end up throwing some of it away or giving some of it away? I assume so. But that wasn't really the point. The point was that hopefully, in a time when she needs it the most, she will get this in the mail and it will make her smile, if just for a brief moment.

Her box included:

a baseball rubber ducky

a set of baseball playing cards

a baseball notepad

two baseball lunch box bags

a giraffe notebook

a set of giraffe stationary

Batman crayons

Batman pencils

two oversized Batman pens

an Avengers paddleball set

a chevron memopad

an LSU keychain (that I have a matching Ole Miss one)

a deck of "52 reasons I love Kayda" cards

When I set out to make this box for her I thought I would send her one or two things but when I went to the kids section in Michael's I had a severe complex where I got her way more stuff than she probably needed. My favorite thing of all though, I did not buy at the store. My favorite thing in the box is the set of cards with the 52 reasons I love Kayda. 

I am not sure if I explained this or not but "Kayda" is our ship name. If you don't know what a ship is, or if you think it is a boat, go look it up because I'm not getting into that. It will make much more sense once you understand. But back to the cards. I once saw someone make a "52 reasons why I love you" set for their husband. Well, I don't have a husband (surprise) and I thought, there are probably more than 52 reasons why I love my best friendship. 

I spent about an hour making the cards and coming up with all my reasons. When I was finished, I read them all back to myself and I even started to get a bit teary-eyed. Knowing that I could easily write 52 reasons why my friendship with Bezzy is the best one I've ever had made me smile. I guess the ironic part of the entire gift is the fact that I set out to make her day a little bit brighter and in turn ended up doing the same for myself.

Another great thing I learned was that you never really know how much you care about someone until their misfortunes and sadness weigh you down too. We were talking the other day about how sad she was that I was having a sad day at work and she wished it wasn't so. I also mentioned to her that I hoped her upcoming week wasn't sad because it would make me sad. You really never want to see the people closest to you be anything but happy.

All those times that you didn't leave, it's been occurring to me, I'd like to hang out with you for my whole life. - Taylor Swift