My sister is just under four years older than me. And like most little sisters I had a severe case of heroine worship (I totally typed that heroin whoreship first--am brilliant!). I wanted to be just like her and play with her toys and eat the things that she ate (except broccoli because what self respecting child eats broccoli?) and generally follow her around irritating the fuck out of her. There is a proud tradition amongst little sisters of being just a fucking nuisance without even meaning to and let me assure you I did not let my fellow brats down.
We had a brief honeymoon friendship period in our teens. It was cut short by her going off to college and never coming back. Nothing wrong with growing up of course, it just sort of cramps the whole hanging out routine. I lost the ideals of her and got a friend in return.
And I got very used to the distance between us. She lives a whole country away and after a while she became almost a cartoon of herself to me--it is hard to know a whole person through a couple of phone calls and a visit every three or four years. So I didn't have my friend and I didn't have my heroine and I had something called a sister, something I didn't really know what to do with.
But every once in a while she does something that reminds me why she is incredibly awesome and I am lucky to have her. My whole family is evil and dry and horrible (when I say evil I mean this in the best possible sense--my lovely sister is a Christian and I am fairly certain she spends most of the winter feeding the homeless and nursing orphaned kittens to health) but she can just catch you off guard with great stories or excellent advice.
Long ago I wrote a bitchy little love note to my skin, which was peppered with zits that really looked more like lesions and were swollen and pussy enough to make me look diseased. And she sent me an email advising Benadryl cream. Let me tell you, that shit WORKS. The lesson here is that beauty tips from my sister are often useless as the bitch got the good legs in the family and does not have my scary bushy hair. She has nice skin and never bitches about the hair on her toes so I can only assume that she doesn't have any. But apparently the hormonally evil skin gene hits her too and instead of bitching to the internet she actually found help. In a tube!
I would like to point out that I was brilliant enough to bitch to the internet and so she was compelled to help me. I am a brilliant whiner--not the same as brilliant problem solver but you have to take what you can get in life.
But even better is the lovely (if emotionally scarring email she sent me this week). She had taken her many cats to the vet where they racked up an impressive bill. And our very adorable grandfather (who believes that we all support ourselves on allowances of twenty-five cents a week I think) sent her a check (she didn't ask him for the check but my grandparents cannot be stopped and quite possibly will get into a bidding war over who can pay for her vet bill as Grandma and Grandpa keep separate checking accounts). The best part of this is the letter that he sent with it describing how he believes he had a stroke (this is not surprising, not happy and not the best part) because of the VIAGRA he was taking. My mother swears that he is talking about Vioxx but I fear she is just trying to help shield us from the truth. The thing is that my sister come from overly-sexed stock. I have the unfortunate knowledge that my parents still have sex much more often than I want to know about (which is to say any--as far as I am concerned they had sex twice, one to conceive my sister and once for me) and judging by the knocking on their bedroom wall when I have visited so do my grandparents. In fact, I was once startled awake by a loud squeak of their bed, a loud sigh and a groan coming from their room. I choose to believe that one of them banged their head on the wall, groaned with pain and then sighed as they passed out into oblivion.
That my sister would send me an email at my place of employment to share this lovely letter with me proves that she is awesomely evil.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for this.
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