Adam Oster, Novelist

Hey, if you happen to know my wife, you should 100% send her a message of love today, because it’s her birthday! And because…well, I’ve failed her a bit today…

She’s had a pretty wild time of it lately, because even though the bakery has been her dream for as long as I’ve known her, it has also added an entirely new level of stress to her life, which is saying a lot, considering we have three kids.

So, when trying to come up with an actual birthday present for her, I wanted to come up with something simple that might be fun for the bakery. Since we had taken down a number of things from the walls because they didn’t quite fit the vibe we were going for, I thought that maybe I could come up with some fun things to put up their place. And when I found the below, I thought, these are awesome, she’ll love them, and I immediately purchased them to be shipped out from Etsy.

But, you see, the problem is, the items we removed from the walls were all word art things, like ‘5 Stars, Would Poop Here Again’. And, of course, here I was, purchasing more word art for her…and it took me a day or two to realize what I had done.

I’d like to blame my absolute exhaustion over the past couple of weeks for my misstep here, but really, I think I was just so absolutely needy for something to get her that would go along with her bakery, that when I found something I found amusing, I didn’t stop to think much about whether or not it actually fit the bill for what she would like.

And…I failed.

Which is why when I tell you that you need to give her some love today, I mean it. She has a husband who completely missed the mark on a birthday gift for her, showcasing his absolute disregard for understanding what she would actually like, and got her the exact thing she had been removing from her business over the past two weeks, instead of giving her something that was actually thoughtful.

Which means, give her love, because I definitely didn’t.

Happy Birthday, Gretchen!