Way back in another life time, I worked with research animals at Monash University Animal House. A place where we looked after and bred all kinds of lab animals for research. Don’t hate me. You’ve been using products or getting medicine that was tested on animals all of your life. AND, even when they say they’re not tested on animals (ie: make ups) it doesn’t mean that every single other combination of the product wasn’t tested on animals before WATER was added to complete it.

I was only 19 at the time. It was my first job and the first person that I got to meet in the tea room was a girl named Kelly.

It all started off as a simple note left in her pigeon hole. Then one left in mine. Then, it became a competition to find the most creative way to leave letters for each other. I did one in a bottle. She wrapped one in aluminum foil. I used pegs to secure the edges and so on. When she drove herself (with Tonka) around Australia on her long service leave she took my pegs with her and sent me photo’s of them all over the place.

But after a while, our letters started getting longer…and longer. She would sit outside in the mornings with her dog Tonka having a few smokes and writing to me while I would sit at the lunch room table writing one to her. We’d spend all week writing about our separate lives and then we’d each end up with a 30 page letter by the end of the week.

In 2000, I hit a rough patch and Kelly took me in. I lived with her until I was just about to have a huge break down (my biggest by far) and moved back in with my Dad. I pushed her away. Stopped writing my letters and never started again. We lost contact and I’ve missed her ever since.

Once again, thanks to the beauty of Facebook, we’re back in touch. And writing letter’s again.

She’s just about to leave for Thailand. Every year she goes and volunteer’s to help with her most favorite animal in the world, Elephants. You can read about what she does and where she does it here. It’s AMAZING what she does to help these Elephants out of chains.

Well, when I found out I had 20 days to write a letter I decided to make it VERY LONG. I mean, mega long. It turned in to 147 pages of writing and sharing blog posts from here and my other blogs. I made up my own front cover, added a pretend table of contents, added quotes and had two fake “The Ends”

Here is the cover I made (I am so proud of my little bound book…I am going to bind every letter from now on)

And here is our page of quotes…

Dedicated to Kelly

*So enthralling that I shit my pants
Dexter  (2011)

*Best thing I’ve read since “Green Eggs and Ham”.
Jaxon  (2011)

*Now the questions of the universe have been answered.
Albert Einstein (1941)

*After reading this, I no longer need to paint.
Leonardo Da Vinci (1500)

*Winning.
Charlie Sheen (2011)

*Maybe she’s hiding “Weapons of Mass Destruction”
George Bush (2001)

*We Have a new Scripture”
Dalai Lama (2011)

*Best bang since the big one
Stephen Hawking (2000)

Over the years I’ve lost most of the letter’s that she sent so long ago. I know I have a few of them stored here and there in boxes that I never look in. But this time, I know just how special our letter writing was and I’m never going to throw out another one of her letters. I am going to buy a special box just to store them in, so I can always have them handy.

She’s gone for two months this time. I can NOT wait until she gets back so we can catch up in person. I have missed her and thought of her always and never forgotten the special friendship that we shared through letter writing alone.