People Let Me Tell You 'Bout My Best Friend...

I've been working on Christmas presents. I feel safe in posting this one because I don't think she checks in here very often. (Like, maybe once a year).

So, here goes.
(Click on photos for enlargement).





This is a tote I decorated with an embroidery of my friend Sue on one side. The other side has the "give green a chance" words on it.

The tote I bought at Target (from Xhilaration).
The embroidery kit I got on e-bay for $1.00 !!! Woohoo! It's an old Caron kit from 1977.






When I saw it listed I flipped out. It was so cool and retro-looking and the price was a steal. Obviously the seller wasn't looking to make money. Just to pass it on to someone who would actually make it. I love people like that!






Here's a shot of the whole tote.
And now I will tell you about my best friend Sue.

Sue and I met in 3rd grade. In elementary school you had the same kids in every grade. You just advanced along with the same group. So we shared class throughout 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades.

We were like the offbeats or something. Two people who others thought were just too weird to hang around. Two people who were lost within our own crazy world. Two people that, without each other, would have probably been chewed up and and spit out by all the "normal" kids out there.

I thank God for Sue!!!

We would make up games to play like unscrabble. Using a Scrabble game, you'd made up a word with the letters you had on you tile holder. BUT, you had to think up a definition for that word too. (We even made a list of all the made-up words we had. (No, really!) LOL!

Or, on field trips on a bus we would make up all the words we could from one bigger word. (It usually started with the word CARPENTER as that was the name of the bus manufacturer and was printed on the seat in front of us.

Or "two-word story" where we would write a whole story, (each only contributing two words at a time in turn until the story was finished.) God, that was great! (And, of course, we wrote down all these stories and they do exist somewhere out there still.)

Oh! In the fall, we would rake all the leaves up in our yards, (whichever house we were at), and arrange the leaves into "walls" of a layout plan for a house. (No, I'm not kidding you). If we didn't have enough leaves, we would steal leaves from neighboring houses. (I'm sure our folks would have just loved that if they ever knew!) LOL!

It is no surprise that Sue became an architect. She went on to Cornell and designs homes, (especially bathrooms), for a living now. Isn't that great??!

She was always so smart and so bright. (But she will never let you go on about it.) Because she's just that way. Very unassuming. She would always let me be me. Even if I wasn't the sharpest crayon in the box. She just accepts you for who you are. I think she prefers the used, rough-rounded, peeled crayon wrapper, stub of a person that I seemed to be. (Am).

She called me on my birthday in November, (like she always does), and we talked and talked and caught up again on a years worth of happenings. This is how I found out she is taking another class. (She is a forever-student. Always taking something. Always learning new things).

Her class this time is on a "greener" lifestyle, I guess you'd say, and how to convince your potential clients, (in this case her future home owners), why and how they should be trying to have a more environmentally-friendly home. Sometimes the cost scares people away. I guess this class will help her to convince them that -in the long-run- it does pay off. For everyone.

ANYWAY, that's why I chose this tote for my gift to her.
And I knew the profile of the girl was just perfect.
1977 is about the time she moved away from me. But this is how I remember her.
I love the wild Farrah Fawcett hairstyle and the thick false eyelash look. (Obviously this was never her, but it does capture the time and the spirit.)

I also added her name at the bottom of the embroidery. I didn't like how the original picture kind of just gave up on that area.

I wanted to find an avocado green to border the picture with, (like on the other side that has the word "green" on it). But you just can't find that color anymore. So I had to settle for a hunter green felt and a Christmas green lacy trim.

When Sue moved away, it was somewhere around 7th or 8th grade in between. I thought I would die. But thank goodness there's always square pegs out there like me who find a way to meet others like us!

We wrote to each other, sometimes weekly if you can believe it!, throughtout highschool.
I still have every letter. (I am a packrat as you may well have guessed). Sometimes my Mom would bring up my letter from Sue and shake her head and say, "I can't believe the mailman could read this!", because Sue would write out my address in such bold insane graphics with colored markers, (all our letters had to have colored markers, usually each paragraph was a new color), that it was like deciphering a code in order to read the address! God bless mailmen too!

I feel sorry for people who think they have a million friends when, in fact, they've never really had one true friend at all.

A best friend.
Someone like Sue.

My best friend.

I love her.