Estrogen Fest........

This weekend is going to be a very special one, because I get to spend it not only with my two sisters, but my very own Sweet Girl. I haven't seen her since .... last June? can it be that long? ... but I will finally get to hug her this weekend. If she'll let me hug her, that is.

The three sisters are going to watch the SEC Gymnastics Championships (please let us do well, please let us do well, please let us do well), which just happen to be taking place in the city where Sweet Girl lives. She is going to attend the meet with us, and she is almost guaranteed to be embarrassed by the antics of her mother and two aunts. But she's outnumbered, so she'll just have to grin and bear it. Sorry, Sweet Girl, but your seat is right there with ours! We'll be in good company, though, so just roll with the flow.

We will stay up past our bedtime, scream until we're hoarse (yes, at a gymnastics meet, for Pete's sake), eat too much, and laugh until we cry.

It's how we roll.

Friday Night.....

Spending the night with my sisters after going to the gymnastics meet tonight. It was a win for UGA, but we've got some work to do before UCLA comes to town next Saturday.

Tomorrow morning we are going to meet with our brother and mother to make final arrangements for Mom. She's not dead (that would be why she's invited to the meeting) or even sick. She just wants to make sure everything is taken care of.

We just want to get together for breakfast and laughter.

You're Never Too Old....

.....for your big sisters to take care of you.

I don't know how women without sisters make it to adulthood. Or how they even live in the first place. Or why they would want to.

I used to think I was cursed for having two MUCH OLDER sisters (you're welcome), because it seemed I just had a plethora of mamas. Don't you just love the word "plethora"? I wasn't one of those kids whose house everyone went to on the weekends because the parents were out of town. That would be Amanda. When my mother went out of town, I had a sister's house to go to. I thought it was an anvil around my neck at the time, but that fact probably kept me out of jail on at least one occasion.

But even though they bossed me around and told me what to do and pointed out the mistakes I was making even when I was too stupid to listen ("I can TOO go to a big university and not get put on academic probation" and "Of course he's the right one for me and we're going to be married forever" [times two]), they have always been there for me when it counted.

Neither of them complained a bit when they had to wear sunshine-yellow bridesmaids dresses from THE J C PENNEY CATALOG for my wedding.

They both came to my house to keep Mama from killing me when I was suspended from school in the tenth grade.

They both allowed me to live with them at one time or another. Well, one actually moved in with ME, but that's splitting hairs.

I have the advantage of being the baby, because they continue to feel the need to take care of me. And I let them. I feel a little guilty because I don't have anyone to pay it forward to. But only a little. I feel more guilty about the fact that I just ended a sentence with a preposition.

Sometimes it's the little things that I'm most appreciative of. Damn. Did it again.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in the history of the world who has lost a casserole dish. [Stick with me here. I promise there's a connection, I just didn't have a good segue.] I recently realized I had lost one of my favorite casserole dishes. It's like this one, only bigger and more shallow.



I got these casserole dishes when I married my baby daddy (I think), although I can't remember who gave them to me. If you're the one, I apologize that I can't remember. Never mind.

I liked them because the design on the sides was new at the time and it had yellow in it. It's all about the yellow.

Not only do I not remember where I left the dish, I don't even remember WHEN. It may have been a year ago. Or more. It's not like I frequently take dishes to church suppers, at least not since I quit playing the piano and decided to become a heathen. The only places I take covered dishes are my mother-in-law's house on Christmas, and the occasional "Friday Feasts" we have at school. I know I took a cherry crisp (or crunch - whatever) to school in that dish once. I don't even remember which year. And I'm embarrassed to ask now.

At any rate, I mentioned rather off-hand in the company of both sisters a few weeks ago that I needed a replacement casserole dish. I had no idea they don't even make that style and/or size anymore. We looked in a couple of stores, and I was crushed that there wasn't something even similar.

So what does Mom bring me this past weekend?


It was sent by Nurse Jane, my eldest sister. Good Lord, now I'm writing in passive voice too. Someone please make it stop.

It is the same size as the one I carelessly left behind somewhere. And you know what? Odds are good that Nurse Jane NEEDS it. But she's just that kind of sister. She is much more likely to take a covered dish to a church supper, but she sent this to me just so I wouldn't have to cram all my cheesy chicken into the smaller one. Or make a squash casserole that's not done in the middle.

This past weekend when all the sisters were together (along with Mom), we took a walk at Katydid's house. I spotted this on the ground and picked it up:



In case you don't recognize it, it's the ring off a gallon of milk. The thing we have to tear our fingernails open on because of some Tylenol terrorists from the 80's.

I casually mentioned that I wish I had a bunch of these, because I like to crochet Christmas wreaths out of them. We looked in the craft section of several (okay, three) stores looking for plastic rings about the same size, but the rings were either metal, too big, too small, or too expensive.

Today I got these in the mail from Nurse Jane:


She's just that kind of sister. She would cheerfully have gone into a grocery store and removed the tamper-proof rings from three otherwise perfectly good gallons of milk just to send me these plastic rings. She may have. I don't want to know.

It's good to be the baby of the family. I'm very blessed.

Sisters' Saturday.....

My two sisters and I sneaked off for one of our Sisters' Saturdays today, and it was wonderful. We went to see Grease at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, and I say we sneaked off because 1) that is actually the correct past tense of that verb; and 2) we don't tell our mother when we go off on these excursions. We were so busy talking and cackling that we missed our MARTA train stop, so we walked a lot farther to the theater than we originally intended. We had lunch at a little diner about half a block from the theater, and then we went back there for dessert afterward. Apparently there is no limit to the number of times one can eat at the same diner in one day.

I know some of you are mentally criticizing us because we don't include our mother in our plans, but you'd have to know how it is. We want to enjoy each other's company, we want to laugh and tell stories without being interrupted, and we want to do what WE want to do. I took Mom to a play at the Fox one time, and she bolted out the side door before the last note had died away. You're welcome, Mom.

We try to plan a Sisters' Saturday every month, but it doesn't always work out that way. We don't always do something as extravagant as a play at the Fox. Sometimes it's just lunch and shopping.

But it's absolutely necessary.

Love you, sisters!

Nearly Wordless Sunday......

And yes I realize that doesn't make a lick of sense.

I am incapable of stringing together two sentences..... make that two words...... that DO make sense.

I am bleary-eyed from two consecutive nights of staying up way past my bedtime, in another time zone no less.

I am suffering from a hangover related not to alcohol but to the good times I shared with my two sisters this past weekend.

We overdosed on walking, food, laughter, silliness, and criticism of other people who were clearly less "normal" than we.

We lost our voices screaming. At a gymnastics meet, for God's sake.

Pictures to post tomorrow, but tonight it's time for bed. I'm glad to sleep in my own bed tonight, but I am sorry that weekend getaways with my sisters are few and far between. I think we're up to one now, if I counted correctly.

Goodnight.

Maybe I'll be a little more coherent tomorrow.