Dear Anonymous Microsoft Technical Writer,

When you wrote this, I have the distinct impression you didn't expect anyone to actually read it. Really? The task list monster? Glorious. Based on this, here's what I perceive about you:

• You majored in English in undergrad.
• You have a perpetually half-finished manuscript.
• You don't have your own office at Microsoft.
• You are doing the work of three people.
• You no longer work at Microsoft.
• You moved in with several housemates to pursue your poetry chapbook.

I wish you well.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Google Maps App,

Ahh!!! You even have cycling directions now too!!!!

You really are amazing.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Every Happy Pop Song Ever,

You suddenly all make sense.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Friends,

I don't deserve you. Each day, I wonder what I could have possibly done to earn your friendship, and I can never reach a satisfactory answer. You are supportive, attentive, and in every way wonderful. And you seem to think I deserve your friendship, despite my doubts on that score.

Maybe this is a slight hint of the love we have from Christ. I don't deserve his love, but he really, really wants to give it to me. To all of us. Deep, true love isn't our love for God, but his love for us, sacrificial love with no reason to expect an equal return. He meets us halfway and, when we aren't there, he keeps going the whole way until he reaches us where we are.

Thanks for loving me so much I can start to understand, however slightly, the love of Christ.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Google Maps App,

I am so, so, so, so, so grateful for your development. Yes, using HopStop got me by, and if I was okay working with generalities, the Apple maps app did okay, but ever since downloading you, I have felt once again whole in my navigational requirements. Not only do you actually have public transit worked into the app, you list out every stop between the origin and the destination in a handy expand-and-collapsible section. I know I'm geeking out right now in a most decidedly unbecoming way, but after freaking out a few months ago when Apple dropped every kind of navigational ball, I wanted to make public my feelings for you. A few weeks too late, Google Maps App, will you be my Valentine?

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear S,

That was AWESOME. All of it was, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Hanging out with you for three whole days in a row for the first time in YEARS.
• Getting a chance to know your fiancé husband better.
• Meeting some of your Tennessee friends finally.
• My shoes somehow (miraculously) not even smelling bad.
• Partying all day Saturday for the best reason I could ever come up with.
• Seeing your fiancé husband cry the minute he saw you walking down the aisle.
• Hearing a random stranger stop his golf cart and exclaim that you're the most beautiful bride he's ever seen.
• Getting to use a microphone to brag about how awesome you are to a room full of attentive wedding guests.
• Witnessing two super deserving people vow to be each other's others for the rest of their lives.

It all went by too fast, but I'm so glad I got to be the one standing by your side.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Madison,

Where else can I:

• make friends on the bus home from work?
• walk past the poshest restaurant in town, look in the window, and find one of the chefs (my next door neighbor) waving at me delightedly?
• spend the weekend biking, sailing, picking up my CSA, and attending a food and music festival downtown?
• fill my bike tires with a gratis air pump and fix-it station set up along the bike path by the city?
• always—always—get a smile on my face when I enter downtown because it's always just the right place to be?

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear BFF,

That was the best visit in the history of BFFness. When I left for work yesterday, I was already missing you and your adorable daughter. When I got home last night, my apartment seemed so wide-open and empty without you two there. Five days were way too short, but I'm so glad we got them.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Garlic Scapes and Kohlrabi,

How is it that you look so darn cool?

image from applepiepatispate.com

image from livegreentwincities.com

It's so exciting to open my CSA box each weekend and see what's inside!

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Toes,

I get it. We're happy. And I know that you've wiggled whenever I'm happy since the summer I was born. Still. Today's joyful toe-wiggling is getting a little fidgety.

Okay, fine, you're right. I don't mind at all. When the first news I have in the morning is about a dear friend's engagement (and subsequent welcome request to be in her wedding too!), and the sun is shining and the air cool, and the sewing machine I bought second-hand over the weekend works, and I reach the half-way point in the project I'm writing, and ... well ... this day happens ... the most appropriate thing in the world is for my toes to wiggle out of control.

So wiggle away, dear ones. Wiggle away.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Kids Who Live Downstairs,

Thanks for recruiting me into your water battle this afternoon. I confess: I had fully intended to plant my geraniums on the balcony and go inside for a nap, but combining my watering can with your battle against your dad (a.k.a. my landlord) was something akin to brilliance.

Of course, I do have reservations. Aiming a water gun at my landlord seems, shall we say, counterintuitive. He seemed okay with it, though. At least, I think that's what the dousing I got meant.

Now, though, I'm really tired, but the nap is much more earned, at least.

May we have many more of these in the summer days ahead!

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Sweet Potatoes,

How is it possible that I ever thought you were disgusting? Your rich, earthy taste straight out of the oven, the ease with which your skin peels off the vibrant orange center ... with a touch of salt and pepper, you're amazing, but you don't even need that. You're perfect just the way you are.

Maybe that's why I used to think you were awful; I had only ever tasted you dolled up and coiffed until you didn't resemble yourself at all. Add marshmallows or breadcrumbs and you're no longer the root vegetable that I know and love. I met you in disguise.

You're sort of like salmon: fresh salmon, slightly baked or grilled, with just the lightest sprinkling of lemon. Nature did most of the work getting you to be tasty. We just have to add some heat.

Excuse me. I have a plate of sweet potato sitting beside me that begs me to return.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Creative Writing,

Seriously, you're being so kind to me lately that I can barely stand it. Get ready for greatness!

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Monona,

Thank you for being located so close to my laundromat. With a bike, I can zip over to your gently lapping shores while my clothes wash and dry, and I can enjoy the relaxing undulation of the floating dock, rising and falling like some large (stiff) creature breathing. What could be more pleasant than an hour of hard working laundry so pleasantly passed gazing over the water's surface, changing with each breeze like a fickle child. This is life: the smell of lake slime on the distant rack of canoes, the sound of ducks honking as they pass the time of day, the feel of sun on my neck and weathered dock wood on my legs.

And then a great blue heron glides across my vision, its overlong legs and neck so awkward, but its wings so graceful as it just skims the lake surface on the downbeat, crossing to land on the opposite shore.

It has been four months since I arrived here with a moving truck full of hope, and yet I remain in daily disbelief that this place is really my home.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Landlord, Landlady, God, and Timing,

Thank you so much for deciding to let me stay here. I didn't want to sound petulant and childish, but the idea of moving this fall—for the fifth time in six years—made me want to cry. It, in fact, did make me cry. Especially after seeing some of the apartments available elsewhere in the city within this price range, I couldn't bear the idea of leaving my garret, this neighborhood, or your family. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Creative Writing,

Sometimes you're so terribly rewarding that I wonder why I don't spend all day writing.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Antonio Lotti,

Thank you for this rich, liturgical composition.




Crucifixus pro nobis, et passus, et sepultus est. Laus Deo.

Amen.

Dear Large Corporation That Took Two Months to Interview Me and Lead Me On,

Thanks for hiring me. I hope I like you as much as I'll like the paycheck.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Apartment,

I still love you.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Crotchety Old Wives Who Say "Three Times a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride,"

HA! Thwarted again!

You thought you had me, didn't you, with the last wedding I was in? And you thought you SUPER-had me with this fourth one in September. I know you did, because you're old wives who want to ruin the happiness of youth with inane sayings based in lies.

But I'm looking at two times a bridesmaid, two times a maid of honor, and that is not the same thing. Instead of indicating I am destined for spinsterhood, it shows, instead, that I am, in fact, REALLY good at developing relationships, deepening bonds and staying true over a long period of time. Two times a bridesmaid for friends I've had since birth and first grade. Two times a maid of honor for friends since ages 11 and 12. Two times a bridesmaid, two times a maid of honor: I am a prize for any guy who values loyalty and commitment.

Never a bride? More like building up a curriculum vitae that proves I'll rock as a wife.

(Anyone interested?)

Hugs & kisses,
B