A surprise gift

Yesterday we went to see Cliff's Aunt Gertrude, who is in the hospital at Jefferson City.  She has asthma, and they don't seem to be able to find anything to help her, except to give her breathing treatments every three hours.  Typical of her, though, she looked bright-eyed and happy, and kept trying to carry on a conversation with us until the coughing interrupted her.  I asked her if she had a good appetite (she always has had), and she replied, "Oh yes, the food is so good here, I eat like a horse!"
That's the kind of lady Aunt Gertrude is.  Who talks like that about hospital food?
  
Then we drove about thirty miles down the road to visit with a couple of Cliff's paternal cousins, Edna and Junior.  Junior cracks me up; he walked into the sandwich shop where we had agreed to meet and said to the waitress, "Give me a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey."
 A couple of years ago he had three little part-time jobs, and Cliff asked him if he was still working three jobs.  
"No," says Junior, "I only have one job now that I work real hard at."
"What job is that," Cliff asked.
"Keeping my recliner held down on the floor."  
It was a good day.  


When we got home, the mail lady had been here and left a package outside for me.  It was from someone in New Jersey.  It's a good-sized box, and it was wrapped in brown paper.  I thought to myself, "Have I ordered something from Ebay lately?"  
I haven't, not for months.  
Now, any time I receive a package in the mail, I turn into a child again.  I hefted the box to check its weight (very light), and brought it inside to open it.  The excitement was building.  I noticed the word "FRAGILE" on it.  
Beneath the brown paper, I discovered that the box was wrapped in Christmas gift-wrap.  
Well, I have a rule that I don't open a Christmas gift until Christmas Eve.  
Since we got off the gift-exchange merry-go-round years ago (thank goodness), I don't usually have much, if anything, to open.  Last year our daughter gave us each a home-made gift, so that's what we opened.  There is something about opening a present on Christmas Eve, isn't there?  
Thanks to Sitemeter, I know I have a regular visitor to my blog who lives in New Jersey... but how would she know my address?  
Well, whoever it is, and it may not even BE a blog reader, I love getting a surprise gift.  Don't worry, I am not expecting the Hope diamond to be in there.  But it's rather nice to see that package over there in the corner.  Now I'm thinking I should get a little something for Cliff, so he'll have something to open too.


If you think I'm silly to think one of my readers sent me something, I want you to know it's happened many times.  One reader gave me a year's subscription to Reader's Digest.  Another sent me a string of bubble lights for our tree.  A dear lady in Maine sent us a box of country-type, farm-y magazines that she was done with, knowing my husband and I would enjoy them.  My friend Jessica surprised me not long ago with an old 1975 souvenir from Dogpatch, in Arkansas.  So yes, it happens every once in awhile.  And each time it does, I turn into a kid again.