Continuation of the Mass-Textomy

I met a very important milestone in my old lady life today - I had my first mammogram. Of course I had to text my siblings the joyous news.

Jerks.

Kasey 'n' Kids

My sister Kasey has been driving the same crappy van for about 27 years. She loads up her three kids and all their crap and drives them around and it keeps on running and so she keeps on driving it. She found some letter stickers and instead of saying Ford Van or Chevy Van or whatever it is, now it says:

 "KASEY             'N'                 KIDS"

Kasey's not the best driver. She got her license later than most small-town teens, and then only out of necessity because I moved out of the house. 

Anyway -- the other day I met up with her for dinner and the two of us ended the night at our other sister Kelly's condo in a downtown St. Paul neighborhood, whose scant parking leaves visitors only a few options, one of which is using the assigned parking garage: an insanely difficult to navigate web of tight turns and concrete pillars.

I was following Kasey in my car. When it was her turn to enter the garage, I and another stranger in a different car watched in horror as Kasey's van jammed itself inexplicably into the wall to the right-hand side of the garage opening. 

...and we continued watching as Kasey simply shrugged her shoulders, punched and held the gas, forcing the van ever further into the garage -- taking the entire side of her van with it.

...leaving this beautiful heart-shaped mark. 

The Evolution of an Appendectomy, Volume 8

...Once they saw I was alive and sufficiently annoyed, Beata and Summer felt safe to go home and get some much needed rest after having been awake for more than 30 hours. My sister Kasey brought a book and sat with me for the rest of the day. I was so touched that somebody was willing to sit there for hours while I basically slept.


Oh, and take pictures and post them to Facebook:

• Kasey: She was half asleep eating that. And then asleep. That's how she fell asleep with her bowl under her chin. Same profile. The nurse came to check and we laughed that I didn't move the bed down and put the table to the side. I forget to take pictures. I was reading a book because she would fall asleep mid-sentence.

  Kady: I fell asleep eating?!?
• Kasey: You got what you needed and fell asleep. Like a babe at the teat.
• Dianne: Yes, except at the teat, her eyes would roll back in her head.
• Kady: Mom!!! Stop embarrassing me in front of my friends!!

• Kasey: In her room. In and out of hilarious eye opening. Sometimes just her eyebrows go up, but the eyes remain closed. And her speech is that of a 98-year-old alcoholic who is very tired.

I guess I should have expected that my jerk of a sister Kasey would photograph me and then post to Facebook -- after all she had her gallbladder out last November:

Mean, Mean Older Sister

Back when I was living in Michigan, and surprised my sister Kelly, we hung out one night and she took the above photo of me in my gross carpeted extended stay apartment. 

And then she posted it on Facebook with the caption, "Private message me if you're interested."

You would think I would definitely have gotten a boyfriend out of the deal. I mean, look at my sexy stance. Look at my leggings as pants. Nope. 

"I don't know. She's got a lot of mileage on her." - my brother-in-law.

"Isn't that what they call "vintage?"" - my brother.

"Maybe we could work out a trade. I have a bottle of ketchup." - my brother-in-law. (Inside joke.)

"How much for the door knob?" - old friend of my brother's.

"...Are you calling my sister a door knob?" - my brother.

Now That's Good Auntie-ing

Little Miyo, Puddin 'N Pie. Said my truck was "old fashioned". And then she only ate two bites of her $8.00 Cherryberry Frozen Yogurt Sundae. Back in the olden days she'd a been cruisin' for a bruisin'. But today is 2013 and you can't physically harm a child legally, so...

...Instead I made her carry all of my Bed Bath and Beyond purchases (I bought an over-door shoe holder for my shoes and also a fan! since my apartment has no A/C. And some Barkeeper's Friend because, well, you know.) And I wouldn't help her. Not for the entire quarter-mile walk back to Ol' Blue across the world's largest Urban Sprawl parking lot. (I also bought her a book -- James and the Giant Peach -- at Barnes and Noble and since she had no space to carry it I shoved it down her shorts.)

That'll learn her!

Mean, Mean Younger Sister

I'm loving this new series: Mean, Mean Older Sister.

I got an email from a person in my extended family who wishes to remain anonymous. You can try to guess who it was, but I'll never tell. She asked if I'd like to hear a "Mean, Mean Younger Sister" story and of course I said YES. It seems that one time when she was a little kid she got mad at her older brother. She went into his underwear drawer and pulled out a pair of his underwear. Then she pooped in them and put them back.*

*I am crying I am laughing so hard as I type this. There are literally tears in my eyes.

Mean, Mean Older Sister, Vol. 2

After writing about Kelly and her terrible terrible meanness, and do you remember how mean she can really be? It got me thinking: was I ever mean to my younger sister Kasey? And of course the answer is no.

Look at us, getting along! At the Union Hall! Square dancing!

I do remember one time though, when Kasey was in the bathtub and I was mad at her for some reason -- I went into her bedroom and pulled out her entire underwear drawer. The full physical drawer. I brought it into the bathroom and dumped its contents into the bathwater with Kasey. So she had no underwear to put on after she got out.

Ha!

Mean Mean Older Sister

There was a woman our family knew who had some sort of disability. (I don't know. I was probably six years old and it was the early 80's and there was no such thing as politically correct in those days).

Anyway, her name was Francis.  My little sister Kasey and I were terrified of her because she was in a wheelchair, which made her more 'our height' then other adults and her hands were all crunched up into fists and she looked about a hundred years old.  Kelly knew we were terrified of Francis and exploited that by cornering us at our house and saying the name "Francis" over and over in a voice sort of like the Wicked Witch of the West.

"Fraaaaaaaan-ciiiiiiiiiiiisssssss"*

*Remember, we were KIDS.

Of course, after a while -- it became less and less about being afraid of real-life Francis and more and more about being afraid of Kelly saying her name at us.

One day she took it too far. Our basement stairway had a door at the top, with the light switch outside in the kitchen.  So you could shut the light off on people who were in the basement and that's exactly what Kelly did to Kasey. She shut the door, turned out the light and taunted Kasey with the typical "Fraaaaaaaan-ciiiiiiiiiiiisssssss". For way too long. Pretty soon Kasey was screaming bloody murder for Kelly to let her out of the basement. And Kelly would have but Kasey was totally freaking out and so Kelly started getting scared of the retaliation Kasey was probably planning. Kelly kept the door shut a little longer, hoping Kasey would calm down a little bit. Finally, Kasey stopped screaming. Kelly opened the door. Instead of pounding her fists on Kelly's chest, Kasey just wrapped her arms around Kelly's neck and held her really tight and cried and cried and cried. And then...and only then...Kelly felt bad.

_____

YEARS later...Kelly called that story into a radio station who was asking for mean older sibling stories and they wouldn't air it because it was TOO mean.

These days I get my revenge by posting unflattering pictures of her butt. 

For me, I remember my brother Pete forcing my mouth open with his fingers and then farting into it. What's your mean mean older sibling story?

Mean Mean Kelly

When I was ten years old, I missed the bus one day and my mean, mean 16-year-old sister Kelly had to take me to school.  She was already running late and driving me was going to make her even more late and so she was really mad.

She ripped and tore through the streets of International Falls Minnesota in my dad's white-with-red-racing-stripe-1960s-Rambler with me in the passenger seat, prepping me for the drop-off.

"I AM NOT STOPPING, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO JUMP OUT, SO GET READY!"  

I got ready.  I had my backpack in hand, I got my seatbelt off... (Just kidding.  It was 1987, and this was a 1960's Rambler.  There were no seat belts.) Anyway, I crouched while she slowed to a roll in front of my school and I jumped!


When she tells the story she describes peeling away from my school and glancing in the rearview mirror to make sure I got up off of the road.  Instead what she saw was me in the rear view mirror, arms flailing, running after her car screaming for her to "STOP!"

She got SO MAD.  She slammed on the breaks.  She screamed, "WHAT?!?" at her tiny little crying ten-year-old baby sister who had shut her backpack in the car door.