Scroll down to see my favorite cards. The It’s a Padalecki greeting card is my best seller because my dad really loves it. Clicking on a button will bring you to that card’s Information Page directly on RedBubble. That way you get all the specific details and size options (even matte or gloss options) right from the printer. It’s pretty great.
My Favorite Cards
Not many people seem to send letters and postcards anymore, but I do love getting them and I suspect most other people do too. My friend Jenny B. (Hi Jen!) and my dad are I think the two people in my life who are the most dedicated letter writers.
I most recently gave several thank you cards to the doctors and therapists who worked so hard to help me during my month-long (April 2021) rehabilitation at the Freiburg clinic for cancer patients. (You can read about my experience HERE.) Sometimes patients go there to take a break and recover from chemo, radiation, or surgery. I’m all done with chemo and I had my mastectomy, so I was there to begin my recovery and learn how to repair my body.
It was an incredible experience and truly – it changed my life. I cannot begin to express my gratitude, but those trainers, therapists and cooks who went above and beyond for me were both surprised and happy when I gave them personal thank you notes. Especially in pandemic times, when we couldn’t really see a smiling face or share a handshake, I felt like some kind of personal gesture was important; and it came from the heart.
Epistolary Etymology
I love words, and I suspect I tend to think about them more often than most people. It’s fair to say that getting into the history of words is kind of a hobby of mine.
After putting this page together, I was thinking about the word “epistolary,” which means “of letters.” A pen pal is an epistolary friendship. I was wondering why it sounded so close to apostle. Specifically, I thought, “Epistolary apostle, pick up a thistle, a pistol.“ My thoughts tend to do that. So I looked it up.
Epistolary is the adjectival form of epistle. In the 1200s, the word epistle was specifically a message sent by an apostle (the a-postle, or messenger, sends an e-pistle, the message). By the 1500s this word had changed to mean any kind of message, order or dispatch.
The word “pistol” has nothing to do with dispatching. I checked. The pistol is actually named after Pistoia, a town in northern Italy known for gunsmithery (from 1550s). (There’s also a province in Tuscany of the same name Pistoia.)
