Secrets and Surprises to Arrange

It's not that I'm all that observant or savvy. It's just, I guess, that I usually have at least one friend at any given time who is a little secret-impaired. Anyway, I haven't been surprised by, say, most of my surprise birthday parties . . . even when they were happening during a time of year in which my birthday isn't.

I mention all this to highlight how extra-spectacular my colleagues at Starbucks are.

Last night Ed! and his band had a gig at a local establishment. Everybody from our store who wasn't working was planning on going. I myself was planning on going. But I feel like I've been running from one thing to another for almost two months straight and I was tired. I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to get dressed up. I wanted to stay in my pyjamas and read or blog or something. But Ed! as you know, has been very supportive of me lately, so I felt like I should probably go along in spite of my druthers.

When I got there I found out that, barring a few folks, everybody really was there, which was cool, because we are "technically" not supposed to fraternise with each other outside of work. But now here we were, fraternising, and Manager-Hillarie and Assistant-Manager-Laura were even there, and we all looked like actual people instead of green aprons, and the women were wearing make-up and stuff, and it was pretty cool.

And then Manager-Hillarie handed me a gift-bag.

The store had taken up a collection and bought me an iPod nano, engraved on the back with the words "This one goes to eleven" (select readers will understand), loaded it up with 185 songs, 40 pictures of themselves, and a movie, so I can entertain myself while convalescing. They also bought me an iTunes gift voucher. I was overwhelmed. Once again I feel like I'm the recipient of stuff that . . . should belong to someone else or something. For one thing, I can't figure out how to load music that's on my computer onto the iPod without erasing what everybody loaded on there already . . .

Then today my New Church left a gift basket on my desk. I'm not entirely sure how all the things that were in that basket were in that basket--it was a little like a Mary Poppins bag, except that it all dumped out in my trunk on the way home and that was how I discovered how superhuman a feat it must have been to fit it all in in the first place.

I've been getting parcels and cards and emails and other generosities and I just kind of don't really understand it--I think I said that once--but I'm grateful. And . . . heck. It's kind of fun. I'm not going to lie. Surgery is on Thursday and I'll deal with that when it happens, but meanwhile . . . thanks.