I recently celebrated one year together with Ms. Avocado, my sweetie in Seattle. What an intense and difficult year it's been overall... But my new and lovely relationship with her (grown from a friendship of much longer) has been one of the best things about the year.
(Another best thing about the year? Living during quarantimes with Mrs. Toasty* & household, whom I have decided to refer to henceforth as HAMTACO -- the House Around Mrs. Toasty And Co. It's been hard to be separated from other loved ones for so long, including my parents & Ms. Avocado, but it's been wonderful and comforting to get to spend lots of time with them.)
(Sidenote: Mrs. Toasty and Ms. Avocado turn out to be from the same small Midwestern town that nobody's ever heard of?! And they didn't know each other directly, but their moms were colleagues?!? Life is strange and charming.)
Ms. Avocado surprised me the other night with a big box of presents on my doorstep!
She encouraged me to open them right away, so I did. She made me two kinds of gluten-free cookies (lemon and chocolate)!!
She made me giggle a bunch with this card:
And, among other lovely things, she sent me the warmest, coziest, snuggliest blanket -- which turns out to be highly cat-approved. :D
In short: SQUEE!! At the end of a super tough year, I'm feeling ridiculously lucky, and so loved. 🥰
*For newer readers: Mrs. Toasty, despite the obscure in-joke nickname, is technically neither married to me nor a woman. He and I have been sweeties for nearly two decades, and he has lived with his delightful other partners in HAMTACO throughout that time.