It still feels a little surreal.

When Jason and Travis announced that they had opened a P.O. box for fan submissions—and that they’d be opening some of the packages on their Christmas episode—I knew it was a total long shot. Thousands of fans were almost certainly sending things in, and the odds of my box being opened felt incredibly small. Still, it felt worth taking the chance.

So I decided to be intentional.

To increase the odds, I decorated the box with a hand-drawn Cleveland skyline, mentioned that my grandfather was a former principal at Cleveland Heights High School, and—most importantly—listed every single item inside the box right on the outside.

Inside, I included:

All three of my rescue animal calendars (Gatsby the Galaxy Kitty, Fox Tale Sanctuary, and Rescue Dogs —because who doesn’t love a rescue animal?)
My latest book, Gotcha Day
A studio portrait of Chip the dog dressed in Browns gear (Chip is owned by Danielle and her boyfriend, Browns player Bookie Watson —and Jason and Travis both grew up Browns fans)
A photograph of a river otter I took at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History for Cleveland Magazine—because Travis Kelce’s favorite animal is an otter!

I mailed the box about a month ago.

A couple weeks later, they announced that gifts would be opened on the December 24th episode. I marked it on my calendar… and then promptly forgot about it. Four hours after the episode dropped, I got a text asking if anything of mine had been mentioned. I replied, “Probably not. If it came out hours ago, I’d have heard by now.”

I was very wrong.

Not only did they show my Chip-the-Browns-dog photo and mention the calendars—but I was so excited by that moment that I completely missed what happened next. Three days later, I finally realized that Travis couldn’t get enough of the otter photo and kept holding it up to the camera throughout the episode.

Sometimes the long shots really do land.