30 days of thanks: day 15

I'm thankful for my siblings. I have three, two sisters and one brother.

We don't get together regularly, but we do see each other fairly often. Even so, I think if we'd call on each other for help, we'd be there for each other.

My oldest sister, Dana is 13 years old than me and disliked me as a child. I was the baby, I suppose I tattled on the rest of them from time to time and maybe got my way, I don't really know. She said the day I came up to her when I was about 4 or 5 and said, "Dana, why don't you like me?" is the day I melted her black heart and she decided to give me a chance. HAHA

She has a delightful sense of humor. She used to have a mannequin, and when I was 8 she snuck into the living room behind the couch where her mannequin, Zelda stood on a chair. I was playing Barbies on the other side of the couch. Very slowly she began turning the chair, so that Zelda appeared to be turning and called my name, "Meeegan. Meeeeeegan."  I was pretty sure it was her, but it still scared the shit out of me and I ran screaming from the living room.

And she wonders why I tattled.

She's also a fabulous actress and artist and was the only one who showed to help me stuff swag bags (aside from my mom, and apparently I told the other sister I didn't need her, which I didn't remember, but ya know) for my book launch party. She's awesome.

I work with my other sister, Maribeth. We commiserate about the goings on at the office together. We're also closer in age so we've been known to go out on the town and cause a ruckus. I followed her to college back in 1987 and she introduced me to her older friends, drove me to the grocery store, brought me to parties and bought me beer.

Now I consider her a friend as well as a sister, though we've had our ups and downs here and there. We did end up having kids pretty much the exact same age (our older daughters are 5 months apart, both seniors this year, our younger, mine a girl, hers a boy are 5 weeks a part, both sophomores, all at the same school), she also moved onto my block after she got divorced. It was only two blocks down, so the kids got to grow up on the same street. Of course, when I got divorced, I moved, but we still live close.

So we get to work, party and go to the same school functions together. It's been fun. She listens to my work problems, my dating problems (half the time I'm dating someone she knows, so it's convenient) and sometimes we just sit around and drink wine together.

My brother John L. is even closer in age to me. We're 18 months apart. We went to junior high and high school together for a spell and ended up with many of the same friends. He dated many of my friends to my dismay and I dated many of his friends, again to my dismay.

When I got back from college I got to be a groupie with all the bands he hung out with and belonged to. I loved it. I love music and his friends were mostly cute and we partied a lot back then. How did we party all night and get up and go to work the next day? I have no idea.

Eventually he moved to Seattle, so I don't see him as much, but as the two creative minds in the family (he is also a writer, but will never write commercial so has given up getting published traditionally, but now with the industry changing, maybe he'll go the way of self publishing, who knows?), so we still have much in common and we always have a lot to talk about when we're together. We're also the "crazy" ones in the family and I think it suits us both fine...when we feel okay.

So yeah, my bro and sisters, I'm grateful to have them.

Friday Scribbles, here they are!!

Pandora Queue song: Chelsea Dagger by the Fratellis. LOVE this song.

Book of the Week: Um, I'm going with mine because I just released it this week and I'm totally pimping myself out and because I can. Yep. Dissected by Megan Bostic. You should buy it. It has 2 five star reviews on Amazon.

Netflix of the Week: I haven't started watching it, and I don't even really know if it's on there but I'm going to look. House of Lies with Don Cheadle. Because I love The Cheadle and I love the marketing world.



Quote of the Week: 

Writing Wednesday: Sad

     Just a warning, this is an R-rated excerpt.  Oh, it's also unedited, keep that in mind.  Oh, one more thing, my poem, Me, will be posted on Cari's Book Blog today.  Cari is a rockin' review blogger and all around great girl.

 

      There was a silent pause.  “Well, Jordie won’t be here until around six.”  Jordie Hicks, Haleys’s new boyfriend.  Didn’t really see it myself.  He was a jock.  A tennis player to be exact.  Short, blond, and freckled.  Haley probably could have had any guy she wanted if she tried. But she didn’t.  Try that is.  She was perfectly complacent following David and I around, getting the occasional drunken mash, not going for what she really wanted (which unfortunately was my brother, Bryce, which I totally didn’t get since he was a freshman to our juniors), and just dating any schmuck who’d ask.

     She was really pretty too, and I’d tell her all the time, but I don’t think she believed me.  She was tall and thin.  I envied her hair, long dark loose curls.  I think she had no confidence in her looks and herself in general because she lived in a house of assholes.  Her step-mom was the most superficial phony bitch on the face of the planet.  To her, everyone is worthless unless, that is, you made bank and looked like you came straight out of an Ambercrombie catalog.   Elitist bitch.  Every time I go to their house, she sizes me up, as if I might have improved since the time before.  And she never says, hello, it’s always just, “Sydney,”  making me sound like something disgusting she can’t wait to spit from her tongue.

     Haley’s dad was a workaholic and pretty much lived at his office or his girlfriends.  I didn’t even know Haley had a dad until about two years into our friendship.  We were sitting around doing homework when this dude walks in without a word and opens the fridge.  I was sitting there staring, wondering, WTF?  I looked at Haley, but she didn’t seem concerned, so I said, “Who is that?” 

     She glanced up for a split second and said, “My dad,” then went right back to her homework.  He grabbed something from the fridge and left.  He didn’t say anything to Haley.  Not hi or how was school or who’s your friend.  Nothing.   I speculated once if he just hated his existence outside of the office and slutty bartender he was fucking, or if he was actually mute.

     And then there were her brothers, four to be exact, one step, from the bitch’s first failed marriage, and three half, the product of the union between her dad and step mom.  The older one was a complete waste of oxygen.  He blew up his girlfriend and their two year old son in their meth lab a couple years earlier.  Now he’s coming down from the addiction, and spends his days on the ‘rent’s couch crying, watching reality shows, smoking cigarettes, and drinking a bottle of Jack a day.  Prick is too lazy to even buy us booze when we need it.

      Not much to say about the three younger brothers, except they’re so hyped up on sugar, video games, and inattention that they’d have to make up a new acronym for whatever their diagnosis would be.  And all three think Haley is a disease.  It’s no wonder Haley always wanted to hang out at my house.  Well, all that and of course the fact that my brother lived there.