Besties W/out Testies

Years ago, I gave a special birthday card to my best friend.  I couldn’t afford to go out and buy a birthday card, not to mention the fact that I wasn’t near old enough to drive.  I wanted to make it special anyway.  REALLY special.  I knew it would never be as good as store bought, so I tried thinking of ways to make up for it.  In the end, I decided the best thing to do would be to write a poem.  An Alicia Original.

It was a humdinger.  I don’t remember what it said, but I remember her pulling it out years afterward and we both got a huge laugh out of it.  It was scrawled out in 8 year-old handwriting and went so far as to rhyme words like “to” and “you.”

Fancy.

Today marks that time of year again.  Her birthday, I mean.  I don’t have a great card to send her (she never fails to find the funniest cards for me.  I still have them).  And as I mulled over what to give her, I decided to renew my gift of writing.  Now don’t get excited, I’m not going to write a poem.

The thing is: beginning with that first hen-scratch poem, Tia has always been there to read whatever I had to write.  In sixth grade, I wrote my first story about a pioneer girl named Alice who, in a fit of anxiety over the prospect of crossing the plains, knit 7 sweaters in one night.  Tia read it.  I enjoyed writing the story so much that I immediately set to writing another one set in the Civil-War era about a girl named Emma who was madly in love with a soldier named Matt.  I never finished it.  The story went along very well up until the scenes where they had to kiss and stuff.  The story came to an abrupt halt.  Turns out I didn’t know a thing about love, let alone how to write about kissing.  But Tia read it anyway.

Tia reads my blog, you know.  She gets my inside jokes and movie quotes.  She contributed her irresistible bread stick recipe to my cooking blog.  And she even went the extra mile and read my stories blog where I would take time now and then to write stories both short and long.  Mostly long.

Anyway.

When I switched my blog over to wordpress, a story I’d been writing sort of got lost in the mix.  Tia, champion that she is, had been reading it.  I kept meaning to import the story, but I never did.  I resolved this week to FINALLY do it.  And so -this morning -I did.

I feel like an 8 year old handing my best friend a scrawly poem all over again.  It isn’t much.  It isn’t store bought.  But it’s the thought that counts, right?  Starting today, Delia’s Story continues.  Today’s entry isn’t all that great on account of my taking most of the morning to import the rest of the story.

Honestly, I had NO idea I write so much.  Someone whack me before it gets worse.

(Delia’s story is a different kind of story.  I’m writing it in blog form, if that makes any sense.  “Delia” has taken over my stories blog, so to speak.  It’s loads of fun to write a story like this.  The entire imported part of the story is posted in one LONG post that I didn’t bother to separate, but it isn’t hard to figure out.  First you have to read the LONG post, then today’s post if you’re interested in reading.  I’ll be adding to it as the days go by, so if you’re looking for something more to read with all that spare time you have [that was a little joke], click on over to Delia’s Story).

Happy Birthday, Tia.  I’m wearing your polyester brown pants RIGHT NOW.  And next time you come to town, I motion that you, me, Steve, Lindsay, Jay, and who ever else wants come over to watch Dennis the Menace. We can watch it at my house so long as you don’t touch my DVD player “because you don’t know which button to push.”
(“I bet I do… It’s THIS ONE!”)
**Stupid facebook won’t let me steal any of her pictures, but trust me when I say this: she’s rearry pretty and rearry funny and totes smart. Totes.**