Is there anything in this life as wonderful as good friends? I don’t think there is.

My friend Scott came over this afternoon, with his daughter and her boyfriend, and planted my flowers for me. It was 102 degrees and they didn’t stop until they’d filled the entire limestone planter.

Thank you, dear Scott and family. I love you.

He knew, you see, that it was really bothering me to see those flats of impatiens sitting there week after week, month after month (I bought them in the middle of MAY, for crying out loud) and he took the time out of his really busy life to come out here on the very hottest day of summer so far, and plant them. He did that for me.

I have never in my life ever let the flowers ‘go’ like that; I don’t know what is wrong with me. I always planted them pretty much the moment I got them home, and by this time of year, the flowers were mounded high and beautiful. This year. . . maybe for Halloween?

Now, when I look out my front windows I no longer have to listen to the little flowers crying mournfully, “Plant us, please plant us, don’t let us dieeeeeeee, help us, HELP US. . . . .”

Sometimes, I wish this family didn’t anthropomorphize everything quite so completely.

Anyway, thanks to Scott, I will eventually have pretty flowers right where they’re supposed to be.

Thank you, dear friend. I really appreciate you. You rock.

I know what it’s like to be an overworked, underpaid, harassed waitress server in a crowded restaurant; back in the mid-nineties, I went to work in a BBQ restaurant so my daughter could go on the Big Band Trip. I taught seven sections of junior high classes all day, waited tables from 4:30 until 11:00, lather, rinse, repeat. I worked at the restaurant all day and night on Saturdays and Sundays. Sometimes, Hub would bring the kids in to see Mommy and have supper; he’s a pretty good tipper! I did this so Belle could go on that trip with all the other music students, not because I have some kind of work complex, although I do.

Nice people are almost always happy to tip big when the service is extra-good, and believe me, I knew how to bow and scrape and EARN those tips. There were, of course, occasions when nothing is good enough for some people, and I did get stiffed a time or two even though the service was, if I may so so, superior. Waitresses Servers soon learn to mark for death recognize those people, and we would try to arrange things so no one person had to endure them every time.

Tonight, I did something I have never done in all my life. Tonight, I did not tip the server.

I spent today helping my kids pack up for their respective big moves, and after many hours of misery in their indescribably HOT apartments (shame on you, Town & Country Apartments!!! SHAAAAAAME) we decided to call it quits for the night and I took Belle and some of her friends to Steak & Shake, formerly my favorite hamburger shack.

I hate to say it about a restaurant I once had nothing but praise for, but tonight, the Steak & Shake on the east side of Bloomington was the pits, the absolute pits.

I can endure slowness. I can endure being ignored. I can even endure rudeness, if it’s aimed at me. I won’t come back, but I can endure it. I endured all these things, and more, and since we weren’t really in a hurry, I was going to overlook it.

But lady, when you aimed that caustic tongue and that hateful attitude and that tone of voice at my daughter’s sweet friend, something in my head snapped. Yes, I saw the whole thing, and I heard every word you snarled at him. I also noticed that you saw me notice, and I loved the look on your face when you looked over and saw me, taking in your every movement. I also loved how you assumed that the only old person at the table was going to pay the bill, and began your suck-up dance.

The problem was, it was too late. I already knew you for what you were.

That is why I did not leave you a tip, for a $60-buck table. Your loss, lady.

NEVER be cruel to my children or their friends. You’re lucky the manager wasn’t there tonight. But with a little luck, he googles for his restaurant on occasion and will find this. If he asks, I will tell him your name, Perky.

A smattering of thises and thats. . . .

1. Both of my children and a few of their friends have chosen to move out of Hub advised me to remove the name of the complex and the link as most companies with business practices this slimy are also just the kind that tend to sue when the truth comes out an anonymous apartment complex somewhere in southern Indiana right smack in the middle of the worst hot spell in a million years. I’d be more than happy to email you the name of the complex and the link and a full list of outrageous practices. Guess who is sacrificing her very last week of vacation to drive up there to help? That’s right. Mommy. Because you never stop loving them, and you never stop helping them, and unless you’re a BAD MOMMY, you’ll sweat for them until you’re dead.

Also, I’m hoping to melt off a few pounds.

2. I still haven’t planted my flowers. Most of them are hanging onto life even in those tiny “Plant me quickly or I’ll die” pots from Lowe’s. I guess they’ll stay there till the autumn leaves cover them up. Sigh.

3. I cut the grass, but it’s too hot to trim. And the trim is the THING, and it really, really, really hurts me to see all those untrimmed areas. The mown lawn just makes the untrimmed areas stand out. Solution: stop mowing? Could be. . . .

No, it bothers me far too much to let the lawn go. I don’t want to be THAT homeowner. You know, the inconsiderate one with the neighborhood petition thumbtacked to the front door.

4. How clumsy and uncoordinated am I? I can’t even talk and chew gum without slicing my tongue practically in two with that vampire tooth on the right. And when I showed my rheumatologist, he was horrified and wrote a prescription for a medication to take care of it.

We have health insurance, so I wasn’t worried about paying an arm and a leg for the medication, but when I got to the pharmacy, the price tag on that medicine made me give out a little shriek. Just a little one, but the cashier went back inside the pharmacy and asked the pharmacist about it. I was not happy with the answer.

This medication, without which I will have Voldemort-tongue for the rest of my life, isn’t on the Blue Cross approved list. A 24-year-old kid with an Associate’s Degree had decided I didn’t really need it. If I wanted the meds, I had to pay full price.

How comforting to know that the Power of Life and Death for many people now lies in the hands of the School of Business.

I think the least the insurance companies could do would be to make public the name of the individual who was ultimately responsible for putting the kabosh on a drug or procedure for someone, despite the medical doctor’s prescription or recommendation for it. That way, when the death certificate is filled out, the doctor could write in the ACTUAL CAUSE OF DEATH.

You know, as in, Cause of Death: Muffeigh Geonnipherre Perkins-White, ABA

I’m not kidding.