Thank You Letters, from a Post Grad

Is it just me or did the weather, out of nowhere this weekend, suddenly catch on to the fact that girls everywhere are restless for sweaters, candles, and steaming soup? I went to bed one night on top of the covers, scratching at the EIGHT! count em! mosquito bites on one thigh, wanting so badly for my bed to be a glacier... and woke up in the morning, well, feelin' like my bed was a glacier! You know what, I bet this is one giant Starbucks marketing campaign for PSL season, but it's fine. I'm fine with it.

Now that that schpiel is over.

So you see, I'm from the South. North Carolina and Texas, if we want to get specific. I grew up knowing that thank you cards are as essential as sweet tea and country music, so I thought I'd take a second today and express some gratitude for those that have kept me alive thus far in the real world.

Dear IKEA, thank you for keeping my flimsy little bank account in functioning form, even though your furniture comes at the additional cost of bribing my friend Leah to help me build it (as in... I made her do the building while I did the reading of instructions) and then eventually we got so hungry for pizza that we left a few screws in the wrong places, so here's to hoping that my desk doesn't collapse any day now. But, thank you.

Toto, we're not at Stanford anymore. Sadly.

Dear Trader Joe's, thank you for taking pity on me, who has never cooked a meal in my entire life. Thank you for your premade pastas and salads and what's that?! Honey goat cheese? Dark chocolate peanut butter cups? I'll take 'em all, thank you.

Dear self, thank you for not burning the apartment down during your cooking attempts. Yet.

Dear fortune, thanks for being on my side when it came to this whole first apartment thing. Prepared for a months-long (because SF is psycho when it comes to the housing market) search that would culminate in a shoebox apartment in the Tenderloin with a toilet in the bathtub or something of the like, I was instead shocked when a day into my search, one of my best friends Hanna called to say that her sister's apartment had three vacancies. Cheap rent, incredible apartment, and getting to live with a bestie?!

Dear roommates, well, at least the two of you who were already living here... THANK YOU for being real world veterans and having an apartment that's all adult-like and lacking nothing. I never knew I'd need a fancy, schmancy professional wine opener and books about travel writing and four kinds of pasta drainers, but. Apparently I do.

Happiest of Mondays to you, and you, and you! What's your week shapin' up like?