Write about the most recent gift you gave someone.
I’m feeling a little burned out creatively so I’m gonna be anecdotal for tonight’s prompt. It’s probably going to be a short one, apologies in advance.
So about a month ago I had a super short Friday post because I was out of town and did not plan ahead. That weekend was my mother’s 50th birthday and I was staying at my sister’s. My three sisters and I had planned for months to pull off a huge surprise party with all her closest friends but sort of last minute decided to throw an extra surprise on top.
Two of my sisters were scheduled to work late on the 13th (her actual birthday) so they told her they would take her out Saturday instead (the day of the big surprise party). The first surprise was that they were able to rearrange their schedules to take her out to dinner. The second surprise was that my husband and I were waiting for them with my sister at the restaurant. We live 160 miles away. (It’s mostly highway though so it’s not a terribly long drive, only about 2.5 hours on a really good day.)
Then, we gave her our present. Her dishwasher was, shall we say, not. When we were brainstorming ideas on what we could get her, my sister who still lives at home suggested a new one. “She spends more time cleaning the dishwasher than it does cleaning dishes.” Obviously we didn’t lug a new dishwasher into Olive Garden, but my sister had the paperwork for the new one and wrapped it in a shirt box for her to open.
She was so thrilled. It didn’t get installed until a couple weeks later, but she is super happy with it. Her dishes are clean every time and it doesn’t stink or take forever. I learned way more about dishwashers than I ever cared to know while researching what to get her. I like to read 1-star reviews to see what went so horribly wrong a person felt the need to rant, and a lot of them were actual serious problems. In the end I went with Bosch because that’s what the general consensus was for “best dishwasher” at every store I checked.
Naturally, our weekend of birthday surprises wasn’t over. My husband and I spent lunch at mom’s and played some card games before “hitting the road to get ahead of the storm.” We had stressed over how we were going to slip away in the early afternoon to help my sister get the party room set up at Uno’s and the weather afforded us the perfect, logical excuse. There was gonna be lots of ice.
Truthfully, we were pretty worried about that, since a lot of party guests were driving north to attend and we didn’t want them getting caught in it. Plus, we would have to go home eventually. But it held off til Sunday morning. She was once again surprised to see my husband and I, since we were supposed to have been home by the time she and my sister arrived at the restaurant. Everyone was in place just in time for her arrival too.
As if the surprise birthday dinner, a dishwasher, and surprise party with her friends wasn’t enough, we had one final trick up our sleeves. She hasn’t had a vacation on her own since before my sisters and I were born, and now that we’re all (mostly) grown and out of the house, she’s been thinking about it more and more. She wants to visit Aruba again, but it isn’t fiscally reasonable at the moment. So we set up a GoFundMe for the party to collect money to send her on a vacation.
We didn’t get enough to send her to Aruba, but we did collect enough for her to get away for a long weekend. Then she mentioned she’s going on a cruise with a friend in May and asked if she could use the gift money for shopping and such on that, so it all worked out! She flies out on Sunday and is finally getting her vacation! She deserves it.
Well that telling was a little longer than I thought it’d be. Not complaining, my minimum goal is to write 500 words a day, even if they’re not great words. I was worried I only had half that in me tonight but hey, when I get on a roll, I roll. I might revisit this prompt in the future when I’ve got my muse with me. Gifts are great plot devices. Use them! Anyway, that’s all I got for tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow, TGIF!
Closet Full of Notebooks 