Best Birthday Gift Ever

When it comes to giving gifts, people fall into one of two categories. There are the well-meaning but uncreative people like me who, while wishing to give a good gift, invariably end a shopping trip for a friend's birthday or graduation with a scented candle and a gift-card to Starbucks. I mean well, but I'm just not creative when it comes to gift giving.

Then there are people like my friend Kay. Kay is the QUEEN of gift-giving. She's the type of person that if you mention once, in passing, that you've always wanted to try rare macadamia nuts grown in Hong-Kong, flavored in Peru, and shipped from a tiny store in Maui, she will spend weeks tracking down those exact nuts to surprise you with on your birthday. Plus, she'll probably have had the growers sign the nuts and include a picture of their plantation where the nuts came from. She's just incredible that way.

Yesterday before our run, Kay handed me a bright pink bag stuffed with tissue paper and stated she was giving me a belated birthday present. Inside the bag was the coolest birthday gift, ever. A hot pink running sun visor with KMKB in fancy cursive font on the front. Get it? Kiss My Kitty Butt... the title of my upcoming book. Kay had read my blog where I'd mentioned (again, causally, in passing) that it would be cool to have Kiss My Kitty Butt fashion wear and she wanted to be the first to offer a piece of the coutre attire. I LOVE IT.

She also gave me a gift card to a gourmet chocolate shop and a hilarious card that shows a cat staring into a blender that holds water and three fish, and a furry paw is reaching for the "blend" button.

Chocolate, cat card, and cat-based fashion attire. Pretty hard to beat. I'm going to have to do some long, hard thinking for her birthday because a scented candle is just not going to cut it.