Dear Guitars,

I love you so utterly deeply that it's almost embarrassing. Last night, listening to one of your brethren in the expert hands of my string-strumming friend, I was transported.

Life, for a short time, seemed incomprehensibly good.

As Shakespeare once wrote, how is it that sheep's guts can hail the souls from men's bodies? And while I know that my friend's guitar is strung with steel, the sentiment is the same. He plucked, and he strummed, and he played his fingers across the frets, and I was truly happy.

You are a gift straight from God, and I am so thankful for friends who can play you well.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Inbox,

Remember the days when I used to actually respond to email messages? Remember when I compared emails to pounds and helped you lose weight? I was proud of myself then, but things have changed.

As I type, you have 349 messages, with more certain to come. Now, I'm not of the type who leaves all messages ever in the inbox. No, I leave them there because there's something I need to do about them. Like respond. Or put something on my calendar.

I think maybe your state is indicative of a deeper problem.

Lately, I've felt myself ... I'll say getting lazy, although I don't think that's quite it. I'm tired, my dear inbox, tired especially of being on top of things. I've been on top of things all my life, keeping organized homework lists as early as elementary school and writing down all of my extracurricular activities on a calendar so I knew where I had to be when. I remembered things and did everything right and never let the ball drop. I was reliable. It's how I succeeded and looked good and got accepted to every school I applied to.

But now I'm tired of it. I'm tired of fitting myself into others' schedules: public buses, work hours, work projects, and so on. I'm tired of structuring everything so perfectly that even my unstructured time is structured. I'm tired of fitting my life into boxes and slots of calendar pages, email responses, timetables, résumés, and spreadsheets.

I'll get over it. I'll get back on top of things someday. But I have a feeling that as long as you're around, my inbox, I'll always have the pressure of responsibility, of tasks left undone, of falling short of expectations and letting people down.

Maybe it's that I'm playing the part of the career woman I was never meant to be, and the confusion between should and is has muddled other areas of my life as well. But whatever it is, dear inbox, if I abandon you for good someday, know it's not your fault, nor the fault of the people whose kind, loving, and often encouraging words fill you up. It's just that, by then, maybe I'll have grown up enough to accept that it's finally time to run away.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Television,

Most of my life, I forget you're there. In the corner. All alone. If you were a plant, you'd have died eighteen times by now. But sometimes, like tonight, I come home from work after a long day after a long weekend, and you give me something mindless to do before I go to bed. Just want to say thanks, TV. Thanks for not being a plant, and thanks for being mindless.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Friends,

Five bridesmaid dresses in my closet and approximately thirty-five wedding programs in my scrapbook suggest that, now that you're all married off, if you ever want to see me at a wedding again, you'd better start helping me find a guy.

Hugs & kisses,

B

Dear Trader Joe's,

Thanks for selling prewashed, ready-to-eat green beans that take zero effort to pull out of a fridge crisper and shove into my face while I veg exhaustedly on the sofa after a weeklongfeeling Monday. While I channel my inner e. e. cummings and make up my own words, you provide me with more nourishing foodstuffs than the rather more tempting jar of Nutella in the back of my cabinet or the potato chips that I neglected to purchase for my eatallthethings mood.

Hugs & kisses,
B

Dear Mr. President,

Okay, so it wasn't all your fault.

Yesterday was the last day of an 8-day workweek. The first two days of that week, I went to my job without a voice and with a moderate-to-severe sinus infection that I'd had for 2 1/2 weeks. The fifth day of that week, I flew to Michigan, and the last three days of that week, I had worked 13-hour shifts, on my feet most of the time, the antibiotic for my sinus infection and the air conditioning in the hospital cracking my lips and drying out my eyes as I stared at computer screens and tried to help nurses understand their new software.

When I finally got into the Detroit airport and found my flight home to Madison listed on the monitors, you can imagine my distress to see that it would take off more than an hour late. Knowing, as I did, that you were in Madison yesterday as part of your last-minute whistle-stop tour to drum up political support in swing states, I immediately blamed you for the delay. "Surely it's the president's fault," I thought, "for shutting down the Madison airport to all flights but Air Force One, and delaying my arrival home."

I was even composing an open letter to you on the subject, something along the lines of disrupting people's lives in order to garner support for your own cause.

But then when I got on the plane, they said there had been mechanical problems back in Providence this morning, and that the flight had been off schedule all day. Nothing to do with you, Mr. President.

So I apologize for blaming you for something that wasn't actually your fault. I'm sure that, as a public figure, you're used to it, but on this day, when 130 million people or so decide whether or not you still have your job next year, I just wanted to say oops.

Dear That Sense of Rightness and Justice in This World,

Just want to say thanks. Overall, the world does not meet any of our standards for perfection, to the point that many of us give up on the hope that there must be something better out there. But sometimes, you show your face again, just for a moment, just a small glimpse, and remind those of us still watching and waiting for Better that it really does exist and is worth living for.

When two puzzle pieces finally admit they fit together perfectly, when after months of prayer I get to see two of my favorite people come together, it's nothing short of a relief. The Hebrew word shalom means peace, perfection, unity, and completion, the resolving major chord at the end of a cacophonous symphony. If such a small-scale event can bring such relief, I can only imagine what it will be like when you finally reclaim all of creation. No more pain, no more hurricanes, no more loneliness or barriers to love. May we all live and work and hope for the Better that lies beneath the surface.

Hugs & kisses,
B