Quite Unexpected

This is the happiest monster I've seen in some time. He also made me incredibly happy.

Two weeks ago, exhausted and looking forward to a weekend, I came home at the start of yet another snow storm. I bring in the mail and there is a flyer for services I'll never use and a plain white envelope. The handwriting looked sort of familiar, as if it was my friend, Patt's, but the postmark was suburban Chicago. It felt as if there was a credit card in the envelope.

My mind started racing. "Oh my lord," I thought. "Did I leave my debit card somewhere and it was turned in at a Chase bank and they mailed it to me? Where could I have left it?" In case you don't know, I have a tendency to make things worse, in my mind, than they actually are. I tell myself it prepares me for the absolute worst thing and then I can feel relieved when things really aren't as bad as I extrapolated them to be. In these few minutes, I ignored the fact that Chase would have called me had I left the debit card somewhere and it was turned in, or, at the very least, I'd have received calls from their fraud protection division, the nice people who found the problems last September. I hadn't heard from Chase since they sent me a replacement debit card for the one I had used at Target during the time data was compromised.

I also ignored the fact that I had seen nothing on my bank accounts to indicate the card was missing AND I had just used the thing not 2 days prior to the receipt of this envelope. That should have told me this was not my debit card. That I thought of my debit card first should give you an understanding of how often I'm using my credit card, which is, very little. This is good. All of these things should have been clues that this was not a bad envelope, but my worries jumped through the roof because it felt like a credit-sized card.

So, I ripped open the envelope and, wrapped in a plain white sheet of paper was this monster. I had to actually sit down, I was so flabbergasted.

To whomever sends me these, thank you. You have made a very gloomy, very tiring, very wearing winter a whole lot better. I am humbled by this.

Beverage:  Yorkshire Gold Tea

Deb