Birthday girl

I'm getting right in under the wire with a birthday post for ProfDoc. (See her as JKR in comments.) In case she doesn't want to read about herself she should go here and see what MKAEP put up.

I mentioned when I hurt myself that ProfDoc had sent chocolate and made the chocolate funny. I also mentioned it was a whole post in itself. Here's that post.

ProfDoc is a fan of the homemade gift. I don't mean a crocheted afghan or an embroidered slipcover or even a scrapbook. She's got a real flair for the personalizing. Years ago, back in the dark ages, before Joey went to Worthington ProfDoc and I watched Dawson's Creek together. She was down south and I was here and it was Season 3 with the brown cord coat of lust and it was good. Every Wednesday night there was squealing through the phone and unceremonious hangups when the commercials were over.

In daylight hours I was working the cube farm and she was researching in a small cement box and we e-mailed. Back and forth and back and forth devising shorthand and abbreviations and nicknames and a really specific style of e-mail reply which apparently no one else on earth can get the hang of, no matter how many times I explain. It's more efficient people, get with the program! At one point we were counting down to a much desired episode of the Creek and we turned the subject line into a countdown clock. She's a math teacher, she'd get it down to the minutes and once, I think, even to the seconds. After the season finale our countdown clock became infinitely more complicated and I let her keep it up. About a week and half or 2 weeks before the season 4 premiere (Did Pacey & Joey sleep together on the boat? Would Dawson forgive them? Is it possible to have the titular character disappear from a series altogether? Please?) I got a package from ProfDoc. Inside was a gift. She had cut out a picture of Joshua Jackson from a magazine. He was leather pants clad in wife beater and panty wetting grin and she'd pasted him to a piece of cardboard and covered him in post-it notes. Each post-it had a number on it. She made me a Joshua Jackson advent calendar! Of sorts. So every day for a week I peeled back the office supplies and got another tiny tantalizing glimpse of our boy.

So I shouldn't be surprised at her ingenuity.

She knows whereof she speaks when someone complains about having to think about food too much or worrying about their weight. She was one among many who assured me that falling on one's face, being helped up by old ladies and spending your morning in the ER gets you activity points and that chocolate ingested in the name of healing is also calorie free. However, she heard the "Yeah, yeah, I know but..." in my voice when I acknowledged everyone who said that.

About a week after I fell I got a package in the mail from her. About 2 hours later when I freed the contents from its prison of origamied envelopes and packing tape I found inside a fun card and one of my favorite high end organic chocolate bars. As she knew I would, I flipped the bar over immediately to put it into the schmancy calculator and see how much I could allow myself. Across the nutrition information was a mailing label and written on it in ProfDoc's loopy handwriting it said "-50 Weight Watchers Points".

Homemade is always the best gift.

Happy Birthday, Young Lady, and many more! Thanks again.