Steam really does open sealed letters, although I think if you want to be really sneaky, you would have to iron the envelope flat again afterwards.
I asked Bella to write thank-you cards to to all the kind folks who showered her with gifts for her birthday. She did it for the family and adults, but then balked at using her nice cards for the kids who came to her party, because she said, They’ll just throw them in the trash! so she convinced me to buy yet another set of thank-you cards, but they had to be cute and cheap.
I’m bugging her and bugging her to get these cards written – and yesterday she finally does. Then it turns out that she scribbled, Thanks for coming to my party! on every card, sealed the envelope and cosidered the job done. No signature, no mention of gift, no names …. I was irritated. (She had a list of everybody who had come and the gift s/he had given)
The entire pack of thank-you cards was wasted, and hence I resorted to the steaming exercise – not that Bella would even deem to reuse those same cards.
A proper thank-you card has the date, the person’s name, a specific thank you for the gift given (bonus: add a sentence why you like that gift), and your signature.
Argh. It’s not even that I was made to write thank-you’s growing up, but more perhaps that I think I always took everything given for granted and I wish I hadn’t. Am I trying to make Bella pay for my own ungrateful youth?