CathyO - Queen of Italics

I'm declaring CathyO the queen of italics. She has many ladies-in-waiting, but her italics are really dreamy.

The Bister ink is dreamy as well. And, once again, I regret that I did not buy those PO mural stamps. Last time I was whining about not getting any, Marti let me know that they are still available.

Soooo pretty.


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Some years I post a long story on Christmas Eve. Maybe someday, I will figure out a way to organize all the stories.

In the meantime, here is a story that I really like --about a gift.

Mr. Wilson knows how to do taxes, so he does them. He did them every year for my parents and his parents and all three kids, and for a friend of his. He was very organized with files, etc. No matter how hard he tried to get things done ahead of time, other people would always cause delays and April 15th was always an insane time of year. But, he managed to get 'em done.

One year, during the era when I was teaching art and calligraphy classes at our local museum, we were sitting in our sunroom chit chatting about charitable donations. Someone else was present - possibly my parents. I made a very ornery comment that I had no idea how much our yearly charitable donations were because Mr. Wilson made all of them and he did not share that information with me. Furthermore, I did not get to participate in deciding where the donations went. It wasn't like I had ever shown an interest. I was always preoccupied with other things and figured he was doing a good job at making charitable decisions.

After I made my snarky comment, Mr. Wilson, because he had an audience, adopted a humorous *huffy* attitude and said, "YOU sign the tax return every year. The amount is right there in front of you if you cared to read it."  [Side note: this would have happened back in the day that we actually signed returns. Signatures are now electronic.] He knew that I never looked at the numbers, I just signed the paper. It was not enough for him to tell me that it was my own fault that I did not know how much our charitable donations had been, he went to his closet with all the important documents in binders and pulled out a big black binder. He flipped through, scanned down the page, and started making some really ghastly noises. None of us had any idea what it meant.

Eventually, his breathing returned to normal and he said that he had completely omitted the charitable donation amount. I asked if he could file an amended return. He said yes. I asked if that meant we would get money back. He said yes. I asked if I could have all of it. He said yes.

Yippee. Mad money.
I figured I should use it for charitable donations.

The next time I was at the museum where I taught, I told the director of the studio education program what had happened. I knew her well enough to share the story about Mr Wilson and my windfall of monies to be donated. I asked her how much she thought I should donate to the the museum. Without skipping a beat, she said, "All of it." I laughed and said, "Yes, you are right." We proceeded to discuss what would be the best use of the money.

It always bothered me that the folding chairs we were using in classes were the folding chairs from 1949, when the museum was built. Any time we had family events where adults and kids could sit and work on art projects, the smaller kids would sit on their knees on the chairs and if they were not careful, the chairs would fold up and dump the kid on the floor. It was so dangerous. I dreaded the thought of being present when some poor kid caught their fingers or hand in a collapsing chair.

My friend agreed that new chairs were in order. We were able to buy enough stacking chairs for every classroom and there was money left over for some new tables. My only regret is that I did not insist on a *Donated by Jean Wilson* to be stamped on the back of every single chair. I know they would have done it if I had asked.

So, it was a nice gift and I received a very nice letter from the director of the museum. And little children's fingers have been saved.

Sadly, we were not able to come up with a cool project to turn the retired chairs into works of art.  This all happened just a bit before *upcycling* became trendy. I know they went to places that needed them, but it would have been fun to upcycle them, and sell them and make even more money for the museum's education program.

Hopefully everyone is enjoying their favorite level of giftyness at this gifty time of year.