My sisters

Whenever I go home to visit, I invariably run into people who know my family, or think they do.  We live in a small town.  When I say I'm Slugweirta and Borted Jim's daughter they usually ask if I'm the one who works at the state prison. Nope.  I must be the nurse, then.  No.  Oh, are you Muscle Whip's mom?  No, I'm the other daughter.  They have another daughter?  Yes, although you shouldn't feel bad, I think this surprises them sometimes too.
I have been blessed to have three extraordinary sisters.  Emphasis on the extraordinary.  They have shared in my joy and my sorrows.  They are maybe the only people who understand exactly who I am and love me anyway.  In honor of National Sibling Day, I thought I'd share a little about them.
I have a sister who likes to wear the same color from head to toe.
I have a sister who compulsively disposes of stray hairs.  Even if they're still attached.
I have a sister who invited me to join her gang. 
I have a sister who used to make out with pillows pretending they were Luke Skywalker (yes, we're that kind of nerdy)
I have a sister who collects dolls.
I have three sisters who know the difficulties of single motherhood, I admire their strength and hard work.
I have a sister who punched me in the face once, and chipped my tooth.
I have a sister who believes in the healing power of crystals.  Unfortunately she wasn't around when I chipped my tooth.
I have a sister who drives like a grandma (it once took her 14 hours to drive from Provo to Denver, a 482 mile trip, to save you the math that's 34 mph on average.)
I have a sister who likes grape jelly on her eggs.
I have a sister who adopted three Paiute children.  Because she's a good person.  And an overachiever.
I have a sister who is perpetually late.
I have a sister who almost got arrested when she was seven.  For petty candy larceny.  That was one stern gas station attendant. 
I have a sister with a phobia of dirty rags.
I have a sister who was bullied.  Actually all my siblings were.  One of the perks of being the white sheep is there is typically less bullying, one of the drawbacks is living with the regret of not punching the dirtbags who bullied your siblings in the balls, or the ovaries, I'm an equal gender avenger.
I have a sister who can sleep through anything.
I have a sister who sometimes bursts into spontaneous song or poetry at family gatherings.
I have a sister who writes stories in her spare time, but never finishes them, there are probably a good 100 half finished novels in her house.
I have a sister who can't use a cooking timer to save her life.  Or her cupcakes.
I have a sister who believes in the sanctity of virgin hair, she refuses to cut, color or blow dry it.  And I refuse to admit it is longer, thicker and shinier than mine.
I have a sister who was abused.  Did you know 30% of American women are in or have been in abusive relationships?  I'd like to echo the punching in the balls sentiment here.
I have a sister who reads more than she talks.
I have a sister who puts Doritos on her sandwiches.
I have a sister who has ADHD, she struggled through this before the programs that are in place today.  She is brilliant, but school was a big challenge for her.  Because of my patient mother and her own hard work, this is more manageable now.  Although I'm relying on her inability to focus to keep her from reading this entire post.
I have a sister who knows how to make mincemeat pie.
I have a sister who eats Spaghettio's starting with the little ones.
I have a sister who ran away from home.  Unsuccessfully.
I have a sister who suffers from severe anxiety attacks, and often loses consciousness.  Last time I saw her she explained this to my husband and said, "I understand you're in the medical field, if I lose consciousness, don't probe me."  "I'll try not to."
I have a sister who can't drive in the dark.
I have a sister who hit a cow with a car (in the dark).
But most importantly, I have a sister.  I cherish my sisters, I have long believed that the sister relationship is one of the most unique.  I can't imagine my life without them, no matter how quirky they are.  They are some of my best memories.  They know my dreams and they remember my past. I hope they forgive me for posting all their weirdness. 
Hmmm. 
No answer.

A whole bunch of pictures of people who are like sisters to me.

 

 

Exhibit C: The Ban on Candy

I was going to follow up my Thanksgiving post with Christmas, but seeing as how it's Easter this weekend I decided that a candy post would be more appropriate.  I'll save Christmas for it's appropriate season. 
So...candy at our house was a huge rarity.  At least when I was little.  We got some at Valentine's, from school, some at Halloween, from our neighbors and we made our own for Christmas.  And that was pretty much it.  There were a few reasons for this.  One, sugar is bad for you.  And two, we didn't have dental insurance and couldn't afford to get cavities. 
My parents fancied themselves "health food nuts" long before the whole organic craze got started.  Refined sugar, including white bread, was strictly frowned upon.  No sugary cereals for us.  Our average breakfasts included: Oatmeal, Shredded Wheat biscuits (if you are unfamiliar with these let me assure you they are a far cry from Frosted Mini Wheats.  Here's a picture, so you can fathom what I am talking about)

also common for breakfast was Cream of Wheat and Grits (no butter or sugar added).  IF we were lucky occasionally we would get plain Cheerios or Wheat Chex.  So now you know how pristine our colons were.  My mother would make all our bread.  There were good batches and bad batches, but we never had enough bread pans, so she used the tins the yeast came in to bake our bread.  They looked like this:

 

Consequently our bread was cylindrical, with a bulbous top.  You can imagine what this looked like, if you want.  The round, clearly home made slices were infinitely embarrassing for me when I took my lunch to school.  Now, gum, gum was an unforgiveable sin.  I mean this literally, it was never allowed, never even spoken of.  I assumed that chewing gum would lead to eternal damnation and was on level with recreational drug use.  Also, that it was fabulously expensive.  Really, my mom just wanted to avoid getting gum in the carpet and having school pictures like this:

 

Unnamed sibling

 Of course, I had to have it.  I remember once chewing some gum I found on the underside of a table in a restaurant when I was six.  I'm super grossed out by this now, but at six I just thought "hey, free gum!"  When I was eight I decided I had to have the real thing.  I saved my biweekly allowance of $5 for EIGHT MONTHS to do this.  This was real premeditated gum-chewing.  Chewing in the first degree.  One balmy summer afternoon I snuck off to the 7/11 that was two blocks away.  It isn't hard to sneak out when you have seven siblings.  As my parents would learn to their great dismay when we were teenagers.  I still remember the dude behind the counter.  He was overweight, balding with a bushy moustache.  He was about to become my bubble gum dealer.  I casually looked over the selection of gums.  The syrup filled Dr. Pepper Hubba Bubba was my destiny.

I walked quickly with my selection up to the counter.  I slid the gum across to my dealer.  Along with the 16 five dollar bills that were rolled together in my back pocket.  I looked furtively over my shoulder to make sure my mother hadn't followed me.  It seemed clear.  The gas station attendant only paused for a moment.  Then placed my purchase and $79.50 into a brown paper bag and slid it back to me.  Clearly he was used to dealing with undersugared 8 year olds looking to score some gum.  I ran all the way home.  I didn't even go inside.  I ran around to the backyard, my heart beating a mile a minute.  I hid under our large lilac bush and chewed all five pieces one after another until the flavor ran out.  THEN I dug a hole and buried the evidence and went inside.  My mother was never the wiser.  All this could have been avoided if I was allowed to have Lucky Charms once in a while. 
My first visit to the dentist occurred when I was 19.  NINETEEN!  I had zero cavities.  Because of my sugar-free youth, I maintained a perfect dental record until two years ago.  They should give out awards for that. 
On Easter, we dyed eggs.  Real hard boiled eggs in vinegar dye.  Then my parents hid them around our yard and we searched for them.  Often finding last years eggs too, because my dad never counted and acted like he was hiding them from bloodhounds.  The real fun of Easter was dyeing eggs.  It became somewhat competitive (what?!?) but usually my sister Nana had the prettiest ones.  I wish I had some pictures of the eggs she painted. 

 

 

Thanksgiving

Any time you get more than fifty percent of my family together, mayhem ensues.  It's strongly inadvisable to come near our home around any major holiday.  Thanksgiving in particular is pretty out of the ordinary.  For starters, we don't eat Thanksgiving dinner until about 8 pm.  IF we're ready.  There have been years where we ate at 10.  The first thing you need to know about Thanksgiving at my house is that it isn't about the dinner.  It's about the cooking.  The week before my mom makes a TWO PAGE list of all the dishes that will be prepared for Thanksgiving.  Then, she will assign EVERYONE an equal number of dishes to prepare.  This has been going on all my life.  I was in charge of pies starting when I was eight years old.  I'm not exaggerating.  It doesn't matter how well you know how to cook the dish, if that's what you are assigned that's what you will make.  When I moved out and OR Tire started cooking the pies we all regretted it.  (Just kidding, he's not that bad.)  One year Beadle was doing the pies and she accidently put one cup of salt instead of one cup of sugar AND one teaspoon of sugar instead of one teaspoon of salt in our pumpkin pie.  I teased her relentlessly about this.  I still don't know how you can be pouring ONE CUP of salt and not think twice about it.  It's probably more understandable if you know that she was 10 at the time. This method of divvying up dishes has resulted in some pretty interesting cooking. 
All right, so I will attempt to recreate my mother's master list of Thanksgiving dishes.  That's should be enlightening for everyone.  Turkey (obviously, but there's usually 3 or 4, one smoked and two traditional), chicken and noodles (this is delicious, but requires cooking two whole chickens), mashed potatoes, yams, potato salad, cranberry jello salad, homemade cranberry sauce, green salad, gravy, green beans, oyster stuffing, regular stuffing (because most of us don't like oyster stuffing), homemade rolls (no fewer than 6 dozen), cornbread, vegetable tray, relish tray, deviled eggs (???), egg foo yung (????), sliced apples with homemade caramel sauce, fruit salad, carrot pudding with nutmeg sauce (this is a baked pudding, "come again?" you say), pumpkin pie, old-fashioned cream pie, lemon meringue pie, apple pie, cherry pie, blueberry pie, chocolate cream pie, cheesecake, banana cream pie and mincemeat pie (yes, mincemeat pie).  I think the reason for all the pies boils down to our competitive nature, each of us thinks we can make a more delicious pie than everyone else.  There are usually two of each of the pies and every one is made from scratch.  Tired yet?  Let me explain.  My mom doesn't like cooking, so she loves leftovers, if she's plays her cards just right, she can get us to make her enough food that she can survive on Thanksgiving leftovers until Christmas.  That's my theory anyway. 
A brief side note on the preparation of oyster stuffing.  I have helped my mom make this as long as I can remember.  She always makes it with her own bread crumbs, because buying a dozen boxes of the premade stuff is just "too darn expensive".  So...two days before Thanksgiving she buys about six loaves of French bread from the bakery.   Then she spreads out newspaper across a ten square foot area of the dining room.  I break the bread into bites sized pieces.  I loved to do this because this was literally the only time I got to eat white bread as a kid.  It still tastes like cake to me.  I could easily eat an entire loaf right now.  It is allowed to harden for a few days.  Then, mom mixes it with canned oysters, and turkey broth, bakes it to a gelatinous solid, and voila! oyster stuffing.  I have never tasted the stuff because of the smell.  Which is lucky, turns out I'm allergic to shellfish.
This is all made more hectic by our constant attempts to keep the two human sized dogs from eating our dinner before we do.
So, what else do we do on Thanksgiving Day?  Well, we don't watch football.  My husband made the mistake of asking Pooker, on his first Thanksgiving with my family, if they could watch the game later.  As it happens Pooker was wearing a Dallas Cowboys sweatshirt, so it was a safe guess, and a good conversation opener for my introverted older brother.  Pooker's response was, "huh?"  J said, "the football game."  Pooker, "There's a football game today?" J, "Yes!  The Cowboys play every Thanksgiving.  You're wearing a Dallas Cowboys shirt!" Pooker, "This is a football team?  Huh.  Someone gave this to me.  We're playing Dungeons and Dragons downstairs if you want."  J did not want.  But gaming is pretty typical.  Also, there's usually a puzzle.  We play a lot of Risk, Trivial Pursuit (the best way to show off your know-it-all-ness), Settlers, Cranium, Balderdash and Scattergories.  We are super competitive.  It isn't Thanksgiving unless someone (usually Beadle) has stomped out of the room in anger.  It is also quite likely that they couldn't have watched the game because there isn't a working tv in the house.  The ones that are there are used for mostly for gaming and dvd's.  My parents won't get cable and, since the switch from analog to digital is a giant government conspiracy (more on these later) probably never will. 

A Game of Thrones Tangent

This has nothing to do with my weird family (well maybe it does, half of them have read the books but refuse to watch the tv show for purist reasons, also because they don't have cable, and never will).  If you're not into Game of Thrones, just weird families, you can skip over this post.  I just have this theory I have to get off my chest.  Does anyone else think that Jon Snow is actually Lyanna Stark's son?  I've thought that from the beginning.  I think his dad is probably Rhaegar Targaryeon, and Ned hid him from Robert to protect him.  Or Robert could be the dad, I guess, just the secrecy seems less necessary.  Anyway, I welcome your thoughts.

Also, he's super hot.