Nice Things Are Nice

This is my last day of work until after New Year's (YAY!), and I am beyond thrilled about it.  I may not have any vacation or sick time left due to being out after the surgery on my wrist, but due to circumstances that are actually unfair, I do have a lot of personal days to use, and what better time to use them?  Makes the unfair seem just a little bit more fair.

Tomorrow's personal day is a medical day - you know, the yearly tests, scans, appts that let you know how well you are or are not doing.  I'm hoping mine will all say I'm doing fine, because I've had enough of it right now to last me several more years.

In any event, today is Three on Thursday, and I have decided to share three things with you that are nice at Christmastime.  (Yes, there are more than three, but you get what I'm doing here, right?)

1.  When a co-worker who is usually not that nice gets excited about a small gift you gave them.  As you likely know, my co-workers and I are not besties.  But every year, I like to give each of them some small thing for a Christmas gift because I love Christmas and I love giving gifts.  One person in particular makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a giddy schoolgirl.  I bought her a gift card to a vegetarian sandwich place near our work, and enclosed it in a card with a cat on the front (to her credit, she is a cat lover).  To be honest, I really do not expect thanks - I do it because I like to and because it makes me feel the Christmas spirit even more.  But today when she opened it, she actually a) smiled, b) thanked me, and c) seemed very happy about the whole thing.  And that pleased me.

2.  Hamlet has a Christmas-themed bandanna that he wears (it originally belonged to Dug).  Whenever we are out for a walk and people see him, they generally smile anyway because he is such a happy creature, walking along.  But a lot of people have stopped to pet him particularly to comment on his festive wear.  They get to smile, he is thrilled with the attention, and it's all good.  I used to tell Dug, and I now tell Hamlet, that if you can make someone smile, you've done a good thing, since it may be the first thing they have had to smile about all day.

3.  Years ago, I had a co-worker at another job who was truly one of the oddest individuals I have ever met.  We got along just fine, and she had a really good sense of humor, but I never thought we were particularly close.  About ten years ago, she remarried and moved to Maine.  Every single year since then, she sends a box of homemade Christmas cookies to us.  (She was trained as a pastry chef, so they are particularly good!)  This never fails to amaze and puzzle me, but I also think it is just lovely.  Whenever I tell someone who knows her about this, they are just as puzzled and amazed.  It just proves that you never really know what to expect from a person.  (Though every year, The Tim gets worried if we reach the middle of December, and 'The Box' has not yet arrived ...)

Here's hoping that this Christmas season has brought, or will bring, something nice your way.