old

We haven't decorated the exterior of our house. Last year we didn't because we didn't want to spend the money, this year we were just too tired.

Aging just kills me.

It always makes me chuckle when I think back to the day I turned 30 (almost sixteen years ago now.) My friend Crystal and I were sitting in a club, waiting for the rest of the group to show up. I was wearing a black blazer with corset lacing up the side, a knee length pencil skirt and a pair of knee high, leather laced up boots. I had a cigarette in one hand and a double rye & coke in the other.

"Wow!" said Crystal. "I can't believe you're 30!"

"That's because you're twenty-one," I said with a smirk. "At least I am young at heart."

"That's true," she agreed. "You'll have to come out for MY thirieth. You'll be forty by then!"

I took a long sip of the whiskey. "Where do they go, do you think?"

"Who?"

"The forty year olds - to party. Why isn't there clubs for people over forty?"

"I dunno! Maybe they don't like to party."

I know the answer to this one now that I'm forty-five. We don't have time, and if we did, we'd be having a nap.

Happy Tuesday!

I ♥ coffee

photo courtesy of PDPhoto.org

Even though I've read that I shouldn't have coffee (or carbonated beverages, dairy, sugar, asparatame, yeast, gluten, nightshade plants like tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes or eggplant) I just can't help but love it.

When I was very young, I was always fascinated by the ritual. Not so much from my own parents, who used instant coffee. But my boyfriend's parents had a regular coffee pot and every morning it was made twice - once before the boys went out to feed the horses (they had Clydedales) and once just before breakfast was served.

The five teen boys and their parents, all lifted their cups when the pot came around, but I was left to make tea, and I remember thinking how I loved the scent of brewing coffee.

Years later I was working in Northern Alberta as a server, and myself and some friends went into the restaurant for lunch on our day off. It was so busy that the server poured coffee for all of us and didn't come back. After waiting a few minutes, someone else asked if I'd ever drank coffee before and I admitted that I didn't.

"Load it up and you'll be fine," one of them said.

"Load it up?"

"With cream and sugar."

Well, I've been hooked since then. When I was working in restaurants I always had a coffee on the go, and drank it whether it was cold or not. It helped me stay awake when I was bartending until 4 a.m. When I was managing clothing stores, it picked me up at 4 p.m. Now that I have a chronic fatigue issue, it helps me go that extra mile. With coffee, I barely ever nap.

Maybe when I retire, I will switch to decaf.

on catching up laundry and sisters

Sisters, by Lena Sotskova

I slept late this morning, to make up for the long work day yesterday. In the past, working a nine or ten hour day was nothing, but since I have aquired this fatigue issue, it feels more like twenty hours!

The early afternoon has been moderately productive, though. I've done several basins of handwashing, mostly consisting of tank tops or sleepwear. I've finished filling the dishwasher and it's running, and I've folded and put away two loads of Bill's clean clothes, and I have another pile ready to go into the washer.

We're getting ready for Emily's birthday weekend, which consists of us taking her and a friend to Calaway Park in Calgary. I figure we'll spend the day fooling around there (we have two for one tickets) and she can have a sleepover when we come home. We couldn't have it last weekend, because Bill was on call.

At any rate, I've been moving through the house doing all these chores, and I can't help thinking about my sister, Deb. Deb and I have not always been close, because she is the one that "married well" and stayed on the straight and narrow, while I am the black sheep who has lived with/married psychotics and alcoholics.

She was there for me when Dale was sick and dying, and she did give the funeral home a $1,500 down payment, which I have yet to repay. She has never asked for it, so to be honest I don't know if that plays a part in our estrangement. She seems to have started changing around the time I was starting with the insurance company and getting married to Bill, and I haven't heard much from her at all since March of 2008. That seems strange, given that she lives less than thirty miles away. (She texted me in January to say Happy Birthday, and didn't even add an exclamation point!)

Do you think it's natural for siblings to drift apart? I don't know if she resents me, or my lifestyle, or if she is just going through a depression that shuts everyone else out. I haven't asked her, nor will I. Our family doesn't confront anyone else - we're very quiet that way. Other people, yes. Family, no.

I think it's sad and I miss her.