Green Bay's airport has this long walkway that lead to the doors, and it is bordered by these large columns all along the way. So I'm walking and I'm walking and I look up to see J emerge from behind a column, long-stemmed red rose in hand. Cue the melting of my heart. If there is one thing that could be said about J, it is that he is sweet. Incredibly so. You could branch outward from that in saying he is creative and thoughtful, and sometimes overwhelmingly kind. When you aren't used to it... it is jarring. It almost takes a few moments to erase the thoughts in your mind of "ok, so he did this nice thing for me... what do I have to do in return?"
To have those thoughts is wrong, solely because it means you are pulling past transgressions from an unfaithful lover to the new man in your life, and it isn't fair. But these are learned behaviors and they are hard to break. I guess in a large way, because of what happened, I became hard to break. Break into, break through, break as you like it. Maybe I did too good of a job building that stone facade... maybe I tried too hard to create an almost diamond-like wall around me for protection. Whatever the case of metaphor might be, there you have it. More on that later.
November went off fairly without a hitch after that, which was the 14th.
In the meantime, I had started the arduous process of planning the gifts for my "bests." You may recall me referring to them in the past, but if not, they are the five people I hold closest and dearest to my heart. Appropriate nicknames can now be assigned; @klreynol, @caitcd, @markstyleme, Mrs. S, and Cookie. Now, were Mrs. S and Cookie to get twitter handles, those names would change. Ahem. Now through a lot of texting and wrangling of schedules I was able to get all five of them together on the 15th of November. Mrs. S is a photographer and I had asked her to take pictures of me which each of the bests, @caitcd would be taking the picture of Mrs. S and I, and then my lovely mother would be taking the group pictures.
None of the bests knew what the eventual result would be, as I played it pretty close to my heart. All they knew was that it would obviously incorporate pictures of some sort. The afternoon went off error-free, though @klreynol fell on her knees from her heels and I made the mistake of hairspraying my hair due to the wind and had it looking awful for the most part. But oh well, all ended just fine and that's the important part. The HARD part was what came next.
The initial thought of these gifts was that I would make a book for each person. It would be made out of foam-core, so obviously really thick, and it would be a collection of memories and pictures of our lives together. A CD would be included, and then at the end, one of the pictures from the photo shoot. The plan started falling apart after I bough said foam-core and realized it was going to look like a second graders craft project. So that was nixed. I started thinking that because I am sentimental and have random boxes for important things/important people, I could start each of them on their own boxes to store the keepsakes and memories of us.
I found these neat boxes with hinged lids that worked perfectly. If I had taken a picture pre-project, I'd post it now. Alas, I didn't. First up for the boxes was collecting all of the pictures I could of the bests and I taken over the years. It was easy with some, hard with others. @caitcd and I have very few pictures together, which will be remedied for the future. Once the pictures were all collected, they needed to be printed and assembled in a cohesive manner that I was unaware of at that point. I had to photoshop and color correct the pictures taken from the photoshoot, which was fun because I started using a great photo-editing program online called Picnik. Coincidentally, I had this coupon for a free hard-cover photo book from Shutterfly that was going to expire, so I popped all of the finished pictures into the template and ordered my book.
Here is where things changed. The book arrived and I realized that it was actually fantastic. With some shimmying around, I re-structured the book into something that I would be proud to give them, as it was polished, organized, and looked professional. So that took care of the new pictures. Then I started writing letters to each of the bests to put in their boxes. The letters were a nightmare, as they had to tell the story of how we came to be friends, some of my favorite memories, and then a heartfelt message at the end to tie it all together. Now, I could very easily have written a form letter to each and just changed names, but it would be out of character and frankly, cheap. So each person had a completely different letter from the last, save for the first page of each letter which described what the hell the gift was for.
Once those were done, I had to make the CD's, which I had thought would be easier but ended up being wrong about as well. The CD's catered to each person's individual music taste, and had to incorporate some songs that meant something to us as "couples" if you will. Let me tell you, trying to work in Britney Spears "Lucky" for @klreynol was ridiculous, albeit necessary. Eventually I finished though and was pleased with the result. THEN it was time for finishing these puppies up.
I bought Mod-Podge paste to plaster the old pictures to the lids of the boxes, and it was the first time I would ever be using it. I was scared I'd fuck it up, did on one but you can't tell, but I actually finished that all fairly quickly. So here they are in all of their glory! Took over a month all together at about 50 man hours to complete.
All of them together; the store only had one black and one blue, so the girls all got green (but that is my favorite green, so whatever.)
Mrs. S. We have a history of notes and letters, which explains why they are on the top. Inside were a couple others, pasted down.
@caitcd. Obviously different from all of the others due to a lack of photographic proof of our relationship, but important all the same. I love the bottom right; I laugh every time.
@klreynol. The oldest of my bests, these pictures obviously go back much farther than the rest. Top center is my first time in drag!
@markstyleme. We make faces... not sure if you can tell.
Cookie. Some of my very favorite pictures ever, especially the bottom left.
And this was the inside. One of the pictures from the shoot for each of us, the books, letters, CD's, and a sucker that would get tied into the ribbons. I was extremely happy with how they turned out as each is one-of-a-kind, not flimsily constructed, and will hopefully last forever. They are catch-alls for letters and notes, pictures and whatever... and they are personal.
Wrapped and ready!
So that was December as well, I guess. Work was a bitch, I let my personal life slip away, and I lost sight of some things that maybe I shouldn't have lost sight of. But this doesn't wrap up the month; that was reserved for my birthday and what the bests had planned for me.
To be continued...
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