The little things that our loved ones do for us can be so sweet.  The things that I appreciate the most are the things that many people take for granted.  A short sentiment to my inbox always brings a bigger smile to my face than any costly gift.  Lately, however, I haven't been able to smile over these things.

 My girlfriend's name is Brittini.  She's 22 and in the Navy.  She's currently stationed in Italy.  We used to write to each other every day.  We still IM each other on a regular basis and, about once a week, I get to talk to her on the phone for about an hour and a half.  It's not a bad relationship at all…

…But my low points say otherwise.  I hate my job.  I hate it with a passion.  The one thing that made me smile at work was knowing that, every single day, I would get an e-mail from her telling me how much she misses me and loves me and can't wait to be back home.  I haven't seen one of those e-mails in a while now.  Instead of one sweet, personal e-mail, I get about three or four forwarded e-mails containing pictures of kittens in personified states with "leet" (or 1337, if you're hip to the vernacular) captions below them. 

Aside from these things being, for the most part, generally unamusing, they just don't mean as much to me.  That, to me, is like me telling her that I'll send her a letter every week, but instead, sending her a bunch of neighborhood watch fliers and church pamphlets.  It used to be okay because she would still have a nice paragraph typed out for me with each message.  But now, I don't even get those anymore.

 My big problem is that I don't know how to tell her.  I want to tell her how I feel without making her think that I don't appreciate her.    One of my pet peeves is forwarded e-mails.  I hate forwards.  I truly despise those things.  So how do I go about letting her know without hurting her feelings?  I don't care about the Rabbi's trip to the department store or the different denominations of bras.  I just want her to tell me she loves me.