I need my sister's help with a dress.
I have the tailor do the heavy lifting with seams and
chiffon and all that, but there's a little something extra the dress needs that
only my sister can do well. After
leaving the tailor shop, I drive directly to Maine. I do not pass Go; I do not collect $200.
Whenever I go there, it's the same routine -- We chat, we
munch on mostly-healthy food, we play some cards or other twisted game, and we
laugh our asses off. I don't think I've
ever had a bad time at my sister's house.
Ever.
We revert right back to being kids.
If we're in the pool, we stay in for hours, first pretending
to behave then creating a huge whirlpool until the youngsters are sucked around
in circles and cannot escape from the drag.
When that gets old, we grab inner tubes and have dunk-wars in the middle
of the pool. In short, we act like
juveniles, and it's even better (meaning we all behave worse) if we throw our
brothers into the mix.
Today we are perfecting the dress I brought up with me. My sister is adding her magic touch to it to
make it perfect. First thing she does,
though, is throw me a decent strapless bra and instructs me to put the thing on
under my dress. Good thing because it
would look pretty stupid on the outside of my dress. After some pinning and primping (of the
dress, not the bra nor its contents), we need a break. After all, we've been serious for an entire
fifteen minutes; that's probably a record.
We decide to play dress-up.
I'm not even remotely kidding. We
are two grown women battling middle-age like valiant warriors, and we are
giggling like little kids raiding her closet.
We pose and make silly faces at the cell phone camera then take a
picture of ourselves together in the mirror.
The mirror picture, though, comes out blurry because we are both
laughing too hard.
After dress-up, we get back to business with the dress
machinations that I came for in the first place. About halfway through this process, we take a
break to play cards and eat beige food.
No really, it's all beige:
Triscuits, Wheat Thins, banana slices, and smoky cheddar cheese (the
smell of which sends me to Nirvana, and I keep inhaling the scent of the cheese
slices before I eat them, which totally grosses out my sister, giving me more
reason to keep doing it). After she
beats me two games to one and after we've eaten the beige food, we head back to
the workroom to finish the dress task.
We decide to do a quick work-out in her basement
mini-gym. I arrive prepared and change
into black yoga pants and a pink work-out shirt. My sister, who has been changing in another
part of the house, joins me in the hallway, and she is wearing … black work-out
shorts and a pink work-out shirt. The
fact that we have accidentally dressed like twins is kind of creepy because the
dress I brought up to her house for some alterations is the exact same color as
the dress she is wearing to the same event in a week.
We do our sweat-circuit and then return to the kitchen where
we are Skyping with my niece (my sister's daughter) while she is stationed with
the Marines in New Orleans. The first
thing my niece notices? Her mother and I
are dressed alike, which is really ironic and slightly creepy since the Marine
is a twin and my sister and I are not. While
chatting via the Internet, we notice that the Marine is making dinner. Mac & cheese -- the Spongebob Squarepants
kind.
This makes us hungry, so we split some chicken parmesan and
pasta. Dinner time conversation now
includes her husband, who is trying to be serious. We talk politics and religion and all the
gray areas people claim one should avoid in conversation. Finally the talk goes exactly where we know
it has to because it's inevitable when we're together. The talk goes off topic. Big time.
Over 100 pounds worth of big time.
Somehow we get onto the topic of the television special about the man
with the 132-pound scrotum.
Yes, this is all very normal for us … the conversation not
the scrotum.
I'm on my way by about 8:20 and home by 9:40. It's a good day, and my sides hurt but not
from working out. They hurt because we
laughed so hard. Again. Like always.
All because I need her help, and she is willing to give it.
I suppose that means I should forgive her for dragging me
face-first down the street with a rope attached to a bicycle when my roller
skates gave out beneath me all those decades ago.
Naaaaaah. Where's the
fun in that?
