The Confessions of Two Sisters

Sometimes life has a way of throwing us into the past. As was the case  from a recent facebook post that I had written about my granddaughter, I had also added a story I remembered about my sister Diane, not realizing that I was the only family member that she had shared it with. 

 

This is the story I shared....

"I immediately thought back though the years when one of my older sisters was about 10, she was walking through our dining room and stepped on a tack. It made her so angry she put the tack in the exact same place for some other unsuspecting person to step on. Sometime later she was walking through the room and stepped on the tack again.”

This is Diane's excerpt:
                                     

"Sometimes having a good memory is a curse. Whispering one of those memories can be like shouting it from the housetops!

I never was forced to tell the above memory but it’s such a good lesson to other mean-spirited little children that it begged to be told. I think it put a stop in my life to that particular brand of meanness. I'd like to say I was never mean again but the person that wrote the above italicized paragraph has a memory good enough to refute that. I was not a nice older sister.

Let the record state though, that I was not ten years old when it happened. I wasn’t even in school yet. I think I was 4 years old and that particular memory actually follows the one where Becky and I were alone in the sewing room and I was gripping the pin cushion and a Sharps sewing needle begging her to let me practice giving vaccinations since I was going to be a nurse. I was eying her fat little arm and she was eying the Sharps sewing needle.

If I would have been successful, who knows where my nursing career would have gone. As it was I became discouraged with nursing and Becky, somehow, through mental osmosis was inoculated against the sewing virus.

Mom never found out about either of those incidents until I blabbed them in later years. If she would have known them, her story about Gramma finding little Becky wailing in the crib and me pinching her little feet would have paled in comparison."  ~Diane

Diane was not my favorite sister as we were growing up. As I read her excerpt I realized our mutual antagonism started at my birth. She is three years older so I literally pushed her off Mom's lap. When we were 10 and 13, we hated traveling in the car together. I especially hated sitting beside her. It got to the place where she would stay home if I was adamant about going and I would stay home if she was going. If I stayed home, I made her pay. I often got candy, a sweater, or one of her treasured books. As we approached our teens and Christ changed our lives we became best friends. 

As I think back to our childhood, I think of all my sisters, I have 5. The two youngest were pretty far behind, so they missed out on most of the drama. We girls shared a bedroom from as young as I can remember till each one left home. I remember Dad banging on our bedroom door, telling us to "simmer down in there or else!" I remember standing in the middle of the room in the dark at the command of my older sister, because I wouldn't stop giggling. I remember Dad or Mom clipping fingernails because they became weapons. I remember being told I was going to retarded school and would miss a very important event in our family. Little sisters are mean, older sisters are heartless.

Now as I see us all pass over that invisible line of middle age, we are friends. We have been there for each other through the death of our parents, through the illnesses of each sibling, there was a stroke, heart disease, cancer several times. We have weathered the storms together and are still walking together through valleys.  Sure we still have skirmishes but we are sisters, some things never change!!

The New Kids on the....Ranch!

This blog was written especially for our grandchildren, but you are welcome to read it too.  :)

This is Joseph.

His previous owners stopped in twice to catch the wayward cat, but he eluded them both times. We didn't see him for about a month, I was sure the coyotes got him. One evening he showed up on the deck. He looked us up and down and then turned and left. He used the same routine every evening for about a week.

 

 One evening he came up on the deck, meowed a couple times and jumped up on the railing and lay down. I looked at Grandpa and said,  "I think we have been adopted!"

I had my camera so I snapped some pictures of him. He tried to act like he wasn't interested. There is a saying, "You haven't lived till you've been ignored by a cat!" I guess that's the evening I really started living, I was certainly being ignored!

Judge had been sleeping out in the yard, but I guess he smelt something funny so he got up to investigate, when the cat saw the dog he jumped down, and I thought "oh no!"

                                         

When I didn't hear any snarls or growls, I went to see what they were doing. They looked like best buds. Wherever the cat went, the dog was sure to follow. They both came back up on the deck and the cat went under the chair. Judge was not happy about that so he pulled him out by the ear.

                                               

Judge pulled, pawed, and drug the cat all over the deck, and then he laid on Joseph. 

Joseph tolerated it for a while, I think he had trouble breathing through Judge's thick hair.

       Joseph has special privileges now. He can eat out of Judge's dog dish as long as there is just dog food in it. If there are table scraps, Joseph gets chased halfway around the house.  Last but not least, Grandpa even tolerates Joseph. When we found a dead mouse laying in front of the garage door, I was grossed out, but Grandpa was impressed. I wanted to call his owners and tell them to come get him, but Grandpa wanted him to stay since he was such a "good mouser"!! Thankfully he hasn't brought us any more peace offerings!!



This is Grasshopper!!

The calf had such long spindly legs. When he walked, Grandpa thought he resembled a grasshopper. So the name stuck.
             

He was born Aug 1. His mother is a high spirited part Jersey cow. 

When Grasshopper was about 24 hours old, Grandpa noticed him laying at the barn. His mother seemed to have forgotten about him. Grandpa brought the cow into the corral and checked her out. She only had milk in one quarter. We came to the conclusion the calf hadn't had any milk since he was born. I went to the feed store and got replacer and a bottle. The cow decided she had enough of meddling humans so she jumped the fences and took off for the back forty. She stayed back there all by herself for several weeks. We put the calf in the barn and fed him morning and evening. He stayed in there for about 2 and 1/2 weeks. One day he decided he wanted to see the world so he ventured out and joined the rest of the herd in the lower pasture. Now we have to go out in the pasture and find him at feeding time. If he sees us coming he will trot toward the ATV. The older calves come up to us as he is drinking his bottles. They look like they are wondering how he can get milk out of an ATV. When he is full, he runs back to his playmares.

Sometimes he crawls into the dried up river bed and falls asleep, then it takes us awhile to find him . He drinks about a gallon of milk morning and evening. We will soon have to think up a new name for him, it isn't going to fit much longer.  We are trying to sell him. He is a lot younger than the rest of the calves, Grandpa doesn't want to keep him till spring, and I don't want to be out in the snow looking for a grasshopper.