POTD and Thoughts - Feb 23

My new really awesome cool mouse. Was trying to figure out how to hold it for a pix that you got the yellow bottom to show as well. Not to sound like an infomercial, yet this thing is pretty comfortable to use. It is not super fancy, just does not seem to tire my hand as much.

I didn't buy this. I was working on a client's computer at their house and they had one in different shades of blue. I made mention of how awesome the mouse was and didn't think anymore of it. The other day when I went by, they said they had something for me and it was a mouse like theirs. How sweet, eh?

I need to be working on that other site right now yet I am just taking a break. I have the template all done, I just have to put the content in and that is more/less copying and pasting. It will be another late night and I am ok with it. I do good under deadline pressure.

Am watching Adele's "Hello" video and cracking up. It is not the video making me laugh yet the other night Lora and I went to Monical's because I was craving pasta. We kept singing it and changing the lyrics to all kinds of crazy stuff. Then, because we had met there, we were parked on opposite sides of the parking lot. We were at our cars "singing" at the top of our lungs "Hello from the other side!!!" These are the kind of things my sister and I do. Out of nowhere we might break into song. May not be the correct lyrics, yet we don't care. So, now when I hear the song I just start laughing. Those are the memories that I hope do not fall into that crevice of the unknown in my brain.

I remember one Christmas we were sitting on the stairs in the house mom and her were living in playing our saxophones. We all of a sudden started playing church hymns with a bit of a blues and jazz sound. Let me just say, I think that was the coolest version of "How Great Thou Art" that I have ever heard. We would play something, laugh and say that we were going to be struck down by lightening, and then play another one. We both can play by ear so we had quite a choice of songs to choose from. I think we did an 80's pop version of "Amazing Grace" that day too.

There is always an adventure when we are together. One Halloween that happened to fall on a Friday night, I came home for the weekend. She had been doing work on her car (1979 Ford Granada) and I told her I would show her how to use Bondo for body work. We were out in the garage working on it and did not have the best ventilation so we were a bit more goofy than usual. We did finally open the doors. The car was white and being so old, it was hard to match the shade. She says, "Hey, let's just paint it blue." And so we went out and bought like 12 cans of blue spray paint, taped off the car, and painted it that night. Will have to say, for doing it mostly in the dark it came out really well. It was funny because we were spraying "graffiti" on the sides of the car. We were going to be blending it all into the same color, so it didn't matter. Years later I would end up that car to sell for her and sold it at a rummage sale...seriously! I had stopped by a rummage sale and while looking around the daughter was reading the for sale ads looking for a car. In the end, I got an office chair and some new garden hoses for free and she got a car for $300. Lora and I still laugh at that one. Not sure if that lady still has the car, yet I still have the chair!

I can't say enough how I hate the thought of her leaving. She is my little hoodlem and I like having her around. We have always had a good relationship and a lot of her choices to do different things were "because my big sister did it." She was my shadow for so many years. No matter what I did, she was with me. I have pictures of me, her, and Wags from adventures in a photo booth, her and dorm-mates when she would come stay weekends with me at college, and many other adventures.

She wore my letter jacket through middle school and high school because it was mine. I think she took some grief for having "Christy" on the back of her coat and she would tell people she didn't care, it was her sisters and that was that. Each time I got an Eastern sweatshirt it would disappear and show up in her wardrobe. Although it fit her more like a dress, she wore them just because they were mine.

She wanted to play basketball because sis did it (and of course, she was 35). She tells the story of one game in 7th grade where she was shooting free-throws and put them up and straight off the backboard and they dropped in. When they hit the backboard it was hard enough you thought it might shatter, but it was pretty. She got asked "who taught you to shoot like that" and her reply, "my sister." I do believe the response was something like, "Ah, that explains it!" This was the year after I coached at the junior high and I was on my mission. I guess when the 8th graders (who were my 7th graders) learned that I was her sister, they were excited. Coach Blew left kind of a legacy (that has lasted even into today).

I many times had to tell her that I was touched that she wanted to be so much like me, yet there were a lot of things that she should just skip over. It is kind of ironic (I am going with that word) - the more I learn and the more healthier I get seems to make some familial relationships strained or more distant, yet I think that it has brought Lora and I closer together. You know, I am the big sister, I am supposed to take care of her, protect her, and all those kind of things. It was not easy and it was very scary to have to switch roles for a while. I think now we just swap back and forth in that role and we do not even think about it. It is ok, I can let baby sis take care of me once in a while too. And, she does a good job at it.

She will move on and I will be fine. When I was going to EIU and would leave on Sundays to go back, she would start crying when I left and when I called to say that I had made it there, she was still in tears. She didn't like me leaving. Guess, it will just be another moment where we swap roles.