"Suuuuuuuuu-zen has done gone missin....

Susan my sister, (you may know her as the one who would rather read a Pop Tart ingredient list backwards (twice) than read this blog... yeah, that Susan)

anyway, Susan is missing, she's AWOL... absent w/o letting her sister know exactly when it was that she was flying (in her car) south seeking warm temperatures and her mother in law's fine cooking...

I've called her house looking for her..

about four times per hour..

I'm used to her not answering.... (this right here is how she normally "does me"....)

I'm grown accustomed to leaving message after message and getting nothing but a furrowed brow and frown lines...

Normally I'd stalk her through her kid, like most teenagers The Princess of Quite A Lot and her phone are tight... she doesn't ignore miss calls, this time though, I don't want to bother her to bother Susan.

Susan is in nursing school, and believe me, she tries to use that, and the fact that she has two relatively young children AND a job (or 3) and a few health problems as an excuse as to why she is too busy, too tired, too uninterested to gab on the phone,

I don't get it...

I mean who doesn't have time to spend listening to her sister's problems (real and imagined)...?

Who wouldn't be totally "into" (in to...?) hearing all about her sister's most recent disgust that Sears doesn't offer free shipping on over sized items (even though they advertise "Free Shipping")...

I'm getting the feeling that Susan (you know, that Susan) might be feeling a bit fed up with smoothing my ruffled feathers over things like that...

So if anyone has seen my sister Susan (the one who never reads this blog) tell her that she is in deep shit, no call to the Sister-Mom (the motherly sister who stood right beside Marmie trying to raise her into a decent and con-sid-er-ate member of society)  before she flew the coop...

Not a single call to say "don't bother calling me twenty one times a day for the next several days...I'm outta here"

Nuthin...

Now, I should dig deeper and say my true feelings...

SUSAN...you freakin idiot bimbo dumb yellow headed person.... you FORGOT our agreement,

 I am beyond devastated...

So...when you think about calling me to tell me that you forgot to call me to tell me that you and your family were preparing to leave/leaving for the holiday... forget it, don't bother, I'll be fine, I'll get through the next several hundred hours of your absence just great... sigh

( I hope your kid is reading this to you and that you are beginning to feel massive amounts of guilt... if so, my job here is done)...

Hope you have a great today... (you, the readers, not that sister of mine that would rather try and decipher Hebrew than read this blog.. PS... Princess, don't read that last part to your mom, I don't want her to get mad at me and not call me to tell me that she is sorry that she forgot to call her sister-mom and say à tout à l'heure  or even Auvoiur Simone...the bad girl...)

And furthermore dear niece your mother's  phone manners (and her piss-poor 50 year old cob-webbed memory) stink (really bad) and we may have to revisit and revamp her upbringing... just sayin.

(Princess, don't read that part aloud either, k..? Aunt Beth loves you and I assure you that if I'm ever to leave town I would certainly call your mother (even though I am quite positive that she would forget to call me) so that she would know where to find me in case of an emergency, even one as simple as Sears' cheezzzzzeeeey free shipping policy.

PSS...One last thing, I hope that if your mother took that misbehaving little dog with her on her car trip that she does something like this on the way home...

If so, let me know ASAP, I'm in the mood for a good ol hysterical belly laugh)

Up town...as promised

You may recall (if you read the dribble I write on this blog) that I made a promise to write the second of my two up town stories.

In case your not one of the many hundreds (well, actually thousands really) Not All Who Wander Are Lost blog readers/fans (I'm makin myself sick here)...who read the first up town post here it is...

Up town was what my grandmother called the heart of her city. Every year she brought my sister and I to her house to attend the big street/art fair they had in July.

This year, like all the others we were soooo anxious to get there and get the fun started that we were driving my grandma nuts.

Me, Susan (hammin it up as usual)

 and (pint sized) Grandma K

This particular year we had guests tagging along.

They were my grandmother's sisters in law.

A set of creepy twins that looked EXACTLY like her husband (our step grandfather) in frizzy bun wigs.....

(If you are thinking YIKES, you'd be right).

They were given the names of the months, May and June....and if it's not just a figment of my overactive imagination..I'm thinking they had another sister named April...(mom, is this true, or is my mind wandering again???)

Seriously....

The twins were large women who both had a fondness for chain smoking cigarettes they let dangle from their lips.

Dangle with ashes at least an inch long.

The cigarettes bounced up and down like mini diving boards when they talked.

I spent countless minutes mesmerized by those dipping ashes.

Wondering just exactly how long it would take them to jump.

The twins had a great fondness for liquid beverages too.

Especially beverages that go by the names beer and whiskey.

I'd never seen the twins in the light of day.

Usually I'd only seen them at night time card parties.

Where Susan and I would watch them out of the corner of our eyes.

They were fascinating characters.

Too much drinking and too many smokes and we had ourselves a little party.

This year the twins were going up town with us.

I remember walking to the fair and thinking how different my grandma was from her sisters in law.

While they were tall and loud, she was 4'11" (or maybe less) and very soft spoken.

They cussed like foul mouthed sailors.

And cackled with deep, raspy laughs.

Because we were young, Susan and I hung pretty close to grandma and the twins once we got up town.

It was still a lot of fun.

We bought all kinds of fair goodies to eat and spent lots of our grandma's money trying unsuccessfully to win cute stuffed animals.

Our young uncle's band was putting on a show at the fair at noon this particular day and when it was near starting time we made our way through the crowds toward the center of town.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, one of these

appeared....

and ran over Susan.

Yes, I did write ran over Susan.

As it plowed into the two of us, I was pushed aside, but it threw Susan to the ground.

She was trapped under the front wheel of the tractor train.

She was in shock and having trouble breathing.

I remember people around us hollering and I remember the split seconds when no one knew exactly what to do.

My petite grandma knew what to do.

She ran to the side where Susan was pinned and like a 400 lb body builder she squatted down and put her shoulder under the front of the tractor. She rose up, anchored her tiny legs sideways and lifted the tractor off of Susan's chest. 

When the tire lifted off of Susan my grandma used her short leg to kick her out from underneath.

When she was far enough to not be squished again my grandma let the train fall to the ground.

The people around us cheered.

My grandma stood up,

straightened herself out,

brushed the mess from the front of her shirt,

and then.....

she passed out.

An ambulance came and checked Susan and grandma over and once they were proclaimed "un broken" we went on our merry way....

We were treated as mini celebrities the rest of the weekend.

The creepy twins were abuzz, they kept mentioning "owning that fair.".........over and over and over

and they smoked cigarette after cigarette looking exactly like my grandpa with lipstick on.

Creepy.

( Tractor photo stolen borrowed from "moonlakeshow dot org")

It’s not easy being green….

I’ve been following a couple of blogging sisters. They are both delightful and talented writers.

The younger of the two sisters survived a near deadly plane crash. She was in a coma for three months.

This mother of four fought back long and hard in an attempt to live the life she had imagined for herself and her children in spite of her life changing injuries.

She was featured on Oprah the other day.

The survivor’s family was on the show too, via satellite, and the older sister had a few seconds to comment.

The two most recent entries that the older sister has posted to her blog (since the Oprah airing) are reeking of green envy.

The blogger tells a story of being weepy and on edge one day and acting like a brat (even though a very grown woman) with her mother the next day.

I’m great at smelling between the lines and I smell jelly-azz, (Now I’m not an official mind reader or anything, but I do have a really good nose).

I feel bad for this big sister…she is probably incredibly jealous that her sister gets to be on Oprah…(and who in the hell wouldn’t be???).

I don’t only smell jealousy….I also smell shame.

She is ashamed that she is jealous that her sister got to be on Oprah.

Because she had to be burned up, and lose her pretty face and her pretty life in order to be invited.

I would love to write an email to this poor older sister and tell her that I understand what she’s going through.

You see, when I was 12, my sister had the good fortune of suffering an attack of appendicitis and the lucky girl got to have surgery and have her appendix taken out.

(I was worried sick that she would die during her operation. She’d never been away from home without me. I missed her being underfoot while she recuperated in the hospital after the surgery.)

(Once she was out of the woods…things started turning ugly.)

The brat had all kinds of people bringing her presents and cards and money to the hospital.

Family and friends visited the house and showered her with sympathy and Get Well Soon balloons.

I wished and I prayed for some kind of disease or illness that would allow me this same treatment.

As my poor luck would have it….I remained healthy and whole.

In my sent email I would tell that older sister that she has done a remarkable job with helping to raise her sister’s children while that sister was sleeping for three months. I would tell her that she looked beautiful and smart on Oprah. I would tell her that she shouldn’t feel ashamed that she may feel a pang or two of jealousy that her sister got to sit on Oprah’s couch….near enough to smell her perfume and be up close and personal with her Jimmy Choo shoes.

Sisters share such a unique bond.

Your sister is out of the woods now…..life can go back to (a new) normal.

I getcha big sister…..that rotten little up stager got to sit next to Oprah....I'd be crabby too.

Susan (when she still had her appendix) and me.