I Called a Friend on Her Birthday

And this is what happened next.

It’s a clickbait headline. And just like clickbait stories, this will take more words than necessary to say the thing. That’s my gift.

But I have another gift.

It was the birthday of my friend (and subscriber) and award-winning writer, Aliza Worthington, so I called to wish her a happy birthday. On the actual phone. Not on Facebook or by text. What’s more, I sang it.

The convo veered to other topics, and I guess I’d looked down at my mulch-stained hands with dirt under the fingernails and kvetched for a minute about not having any money. I said to her what I said in my last post, which was that I’d gotten into the bad habit of searching online for whatever I needed or wanted—”best hand soap for gardeners”—and buying it without a second thought. I can’t do that these days.

In fact, I went ballistic this morning after I got an email about a package being delivered. I’d forgotten to cancel a subscription to a probiotic, damn it. So I immediately did that and canceled some free-trial streaming services that were about to renew. Oh, well. I’ll have another stupid bottle of expensive probiotics, I thought, and then I went to the dentist to have a temporary crown remade because it had fallen off after a bite of avocado toast. (I know what you’re thinking: poor people don’t eat avocado toast. But the avocados came in a bag, five for $6, and the bread came from Costco, and I was only offered a bite of my husband’s lunch before I crunched the temp into dangerous pieces.)

When I got home, I made this poster to make myself feel better from the dental indignities.

And then I ate lunch and watched TV while Marty got ready for work. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw a box on the table. It was not the probiotics; the box had homey drawings on it. My first thought: Marty’s going to think I bought something, but I don’t remember buying anything online except dog food and a hose squirter thingy.

I ripped the box open to find a bar of Gardener’s Soap from Lovett Sundries. The receipt had Aliza’s name on it. It was the most thoughtful gift. I feel loved.

I have the best friends.

TL;DR: I complained about being broke and not being able to wash my hands well enough, and my friend bought me some special soap on her own birthday. That’s not much of a story, though, right?

The end.