So at the Project U.S.E. holiday party, Marie P was my Secret Santa. Which means I was guarranteed a gift that was hand-crafted and super-thoughtful, lovely, clever and fun. It was especially nice because it was all of these things and personalized for me. It was based on conversations we’d had. It was a very pleasant surprise in the middle of the party.
She made me fortune cookie fortunes. We’d had a conversation about her history with fortune cookies when I showed her the blog posts here that had to do with real and fake fortunes I’d gathered to myself over the years. I like putting very important messages on fortune cookie paper. Apparently I am not alone.
She’d asked me if I was planning to make the cookies as well. A valid question which I had to answer shamefacedly in the negative. In high school she’d made thousands upon thousands of fortune cookie fortunes with fortune cookies wrapped around them for a fund raiser. Super cool.
She also made me fortune cookies. Plenty enough to go around at the office party but I wasn’t sharing! Very tasty cookies = not for sharing. No, that’s not true. I wanted to make sure this package arrived home more or less intact so that I could share my good luck and warm feelings with Maya.
Marie also made the box in which she put the cookies in which she put the fortunes. Cloth-lined and cloth-clothed, one of the fabrics for the box, she said, was from an old skirt. You know, recycling, sustainability, that’s how Marie rolls.
Besides that Project U.S.E. is an extraordinary organization with which I am lucky to have become associated, one of the great gifts I received in the last year has been getting to know Marie. She is a marvelous, super curious, wonderfully creative person. Happy Holidays, Marie.
