The Angry PenPal

The letter arrived in a business envelope with no fancy address stamp, which was unusual for this longtime penpal who always used lovely return address stamps and stationery to write her letters. My instincts told me this was an ominous message.

I opened the envelope to see a single sided white paper with the words scrawled on there that she was hurt that I had visited her state and had not bothered to contact her to set up a visit. It especially bothered her that I was only an hour away. If that was the kind of penpal I was, then she was done with me. Don't bother writing. Ever.

Wow. I was stunned.

Why did she think her desire to meet with penpals trumped my desire not to? And why the demand to stop writing? Can't we disagree and still write? Apparently not.

I was glad to let her go as I didn't need that anger and small-mindedness in my life.

After a few months passed, I shared this experience with two other penpals. One of whom also had this woman as a penpal and had experienced the same fate as me- visiting her fair state. They had actually planned to get together, but bad weather stepped in and changed the traveler's plans (who also had two children with her) so no get-together occurred. Cue mean penpal. Angry letter. End relationship.

The traveling penpal was relieved (and not too surprised) as the mean penpal had shown her colors once before when her birthday passed without a card from the traveling penpal. Cue one angry letter.

Seriously, who does that?

The traveling penpal took the cue, sent a belated birthday card and balance was restored. Until their fateful trip.

Life's too short for angry penpals.

The Address Book

I found this homemade address book at a thrift store. It has a wood front and back that is lacquered with a picture and the word "Addressory" (I looked the word up in the dictionary- it's not there).

There are photocopied photos separating each section. In the photo below, you can see it says "AB" in the upper right hand corner. There are 10 dividers in all. There is also a quote on each divider. The one below is by Emily Post and says, 

"Love in a letter endures forever in our memories."

The next few pages are form sheets with spaces for addresses as shown below. What's nice about this is that you can easily add more pages as the need expands.

While I like the concept of the handmade address book, this one looks outdated with its faded pages and  photocopy photos. If I were to create one from scratch, I would use colored scrapbooking papers which are heavier, fun letter/mail images from Pinterest, un-decorated address pages so that they're cleaner, possibly room for photos of each recipient or fun stickers.

How would you create one? Or have you already?