Believe it or not there are days when nothing irritates me.  I go whistling happily through my life, and the sun shines, and the birds sing, and all is right with the world.  These are the magical days when absolutely nothing goes wrong.  The days you wish you had bought a lottery ticket.  I believe I’ve had two days like that in my life.  This was not one. 

I went to bed at six a.m.  It wasn’t my choice.  I was being my husband’s help mate.  You see he had a deadline this morning which he couldn’t make without my help.  So we worked through the night, and we didn’t make it.  I went to bed and had a nap, and at two this afternoon he told me that I needed to reschedule my sister’s birthday (which was supposed to be at our home tonight) for tomorrow night.  Well, that meant making about a half dozen uncomfortable phone calls…one of which was to my mother telling her I couldn’t help her with the unpacking today.  Mom doesn’t handle being put off well.  I have promised her that I would have her apartment finished this week.  It’s Monday.  In my mind I haven’t failed in my mission yet.  In Mom’s mind I have failed dismally.  The conversation, which was terse from the beginning, ended with her stating that her email wasn’t working.  Upon further examination I learned that technically it was just one website that wasn’t working.  I told her that I would look at it tomorrow.  I could actually hear my mother deflate.

After that stimulating conversation, and by stimulating I mean “Get me a rope I wanna hang myself”, I went to the bakery to pick up the cake I had ordered for my sister’s birthday.  A slight aside…normally I wouldn’t have ordered a bakery cake come hell or high water.  I would have baked a cake because everyone in my family would ten times rather have homemade, but to further the failure theme we have going today  I had ordered a cake.  I walked into the bakery and it was crawling with curtain climbers.  I don’t know if school was out early or what but the one thing I didn’t need was a bunch of carpet crawlers hyped up on sugar.  You will not meet a child in a bakery who is not dizzy from the sugar high.  I think it is in the air.  I went to pick up the cake.  Trodding over to the counter, I told the little Chickie what I had come for and plopped down my debit card to pay.  “Duchess?  That’s a weird name.”  I am sure that had I been looking in the mirror my expression would have said “are you effing serious?”  Instead, I said “yes, it would be if that were my name.  It is, however, a title.  You know, like Mr., or Dr., or Rev.”  I should have known better than try to continue to enlighten this Mensa reject.  However; if I had I wouldn’t have heard her very sharp witted response to the knowledge that Duchess was a title not my first name.  Are you ready?  Here goes…she said “Seriously?”  Wow.  It’s on the card, it’s not on my driver’s license.  I told her what it was and the best response she had in her was, seriously?  Now granted I was, if not at my bitchy best, at least in the top ten all time bitch modes.  I looked at her, and at least I had the presence of mind to pick up the cake first, said “No, I thought it would be really funny to tell people that I was a titled Duchess when my name was really Duchess, then not have that put on my driver’s license…which cost’s a little more…just so I could have this conversation when I picked up my sister’s birthday cake.”  She looked at me like she still wasn’t quite sure which story to believe.  I waited for my receipt.  “So are you or aren’t you?”  “What do you think?”  “I don’t think so, you don’t have a British accent.”  “You caught me.  Can I have my receipt?”  I think I get by with this crap because I do it with a smile on my face so people think I must be teasing.  Inside, I’m seething.  Millions of people are out of work…two of them are children of mine…and the idiots are taking all the jobs.

Walking out of the bakery I run across three unattended children looking at a display of cowboy and cowgirl hat cakes emblazoned with razorback crap.  For those of you who might not be native to my neck of the woods, the razorback is the mascot of the University of Arkansas. There are cakes galore showing multiple fraternities and sororities and practically begging alumni to order cakes with this huge red wild boar for there next tail gate party, birthday, or wedding.  These little ones are whirling in sugar coated abandon and chanting “yippee, yii, yo!  yippee, yi, yo!”  My first urge is to tell them the Bruce Willis version of the chant with a strong directive to get out of my way, but I am much more eager to just get out of this grubby fingered bottle neck, and into the safety and Simon and Garfunkel induced tranquility, that is my car.  As I walk toward the door, the oldest child twirls right into me, and in a move that would have made any prima ballerina gasp in awe, I turn…switch the cake from my left hand into my right, thrust the left hand out to push the child away from me,  kick my left leg out to still the swaying display case, and stop his younger brother from crashing to the floor, all without dropping my keys…which have remained in my right hand (along with the cake).  Their mother comes out of nowhere and says “say excuse me”.  Seriously?  Her trio nearly collapsed a shelf of competition level cakes.  Took out the cake I was carrying.  Received a life threatening brain injury, and had a bitch drop kick their collective little asses and she thinks excuse me is gonna suffice?  I give her a look that I used to give my children when they were acting up.  They call it the “Mom” glare.  It effectively says…”correct your way of thinking and behaving or I shall remove you from existence.”  Then I left the bakery.  She quick stepped out behind me and rushed her little darlings into her mom mobile, making sure not to leave until I had cleared the parking lot.  I pulled out onto the four lane and right into the scene of a four car accident.  Shit!

I did finally make it home, and no one was harmed in the making of this day.  As with all crappy days this one too shall pass.  I am helping my husband again tonight.  He is sitting in his chair right now, cheerfully whistling, and typing.  I heard him just tell his father that he thought we would have this project all ready to send to him by six a.m tomorrow.  I am seriously worried that my sister’s party may be cancelled tomorrow too. I am not an oak.  I am a willow.  I can bend with the wind.  I just sit hear typing.  He asked me earlier today how much I loved him.  I responded with a relatively low number, (ten I think) and he seemed a little surprised.  I told him he really had some homework to do.  Between this damn project and the golf, I’m feeling a little ignored.  It really hasn’t been about me much lately.  It really should be all about me.  He should know this.  He’s not new around here.  Maybe I have made things too easy for him.  So I don’t laugh when I deliver this message, and just for good measure…I gave him the Mom glare.

This is going to be fun…for me, not for my sister.  Today is her birthday and she is old.  I don’t mean like she is familiar with dinosaurs old, but she is really close.  I told her grandson once when he was small that she was older than dirt.  I told him that she went to school with Jesus.  A little later we were doing something else and she walked into the room and he said “Grandma, I know who you went to school with.”  Of course she bit…”who?”  “Jesus!” he stated proudly.  Those are the moments I live for as a great-aunt.  I am always there to teach the little darlings all I can and then some.

My darling oldest sister was twelve when I was born.  She married at seventeen and I honestly don’t have a lot of memories of her being at home.  She made me an aunt at the ripe old age of six.  Mother says she was largely responsible for spoiling me as an infant.  I think this is all heresy because I can’t imagine a spoiled child turning into such a well adjusted adult.  As adults we became friends, and though I tease, I tease out of love.  I tease her about…well just about everything…and since her mind is going (due to her advanced age), she rarely teases back.  In fact she’ll probably read this and then forget that I even wrote it.  She’s a good looking old gal.  She must be, since a lot of people think we look alike.  She still has all her own teeth.  That goes a long way towards impressing the men  at the senior center (at least I should think it would) and if she ever get the chance to retire, she just might find out what a rare gem she is.  Her oldest daughter is a hair dresser so she is adept at keeping the gray at bay.  She doesn’t hear real well, but I find  personally as I get older hearing seems to be somewhat over rated.  She has two daughters and about fifty grand kids. Her oldest grandson turned seventeen last month, so she could be a great-grandma nine months from any weekend.   Her grand kids range in ages from 17 to 2.  That’s not her fault, unless you consider that she should have had the sex talk with her soon to be 43 year old daughter who has the two year old.  Yes, I know…it’s crazy, but here’s the kicker, the 43 year old also has the 17 year old.  Insanity runs in our family.  Anyway, back to my sister.  She was a beautiful baby, blond curls, blue eyes, big dimples.  She still has blond curls (thanks to the aforementioned daughter) and the blue eyes, but now the dimples are on her thighs.  I know.  She swims in my pool.  Dimples run in the family too.   She is a paralegal but you would never know it to look at her.  She never uses a wheel chair.  I am so impressed by her abilities to get around on her own.  It’s probably because she took so many college courses on how to be a good paralegal.  I think it should be mandatory.  If more of them took classes maybe there would be less need for handicapped parking spaces. 

She’s a hard worker.  No one could ever accuse her of being lazy.  She works a forty hour plus week at her job and then puts in another 30 hours or so with mom.  They watch the wheel together, and probably talk about the rest of us.  I would imagine they discuss what Vanna is wearing and maybe even solve a few puzzles.  On Mondays they watch Dancing With the Stars and on Tuesday they watch The Results Show.  Sometimes I join them, but not often.  I have my own evening job to do.  On the weekends, sis often goes to Harrison to babysit the grand kids or sometimes they come stay with her.  Occasionally, she goes to Little Rock to watch her oldest grandson play ball.  I don’t think she has missed too many ball games and seriously she does have six grand kids that live anywhere from 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours away from her.  The Precious only lives about 10 minutes from me and if he plays ball I seriously hope his parents show up.   See I don’t intend to be as good a daughter or grandparent as my sister.  I don’t want people to expect me to behave as admirably as she does.  It’s nice when people have no expectations of you.  Everyone has always known that my sis is the nice one.  I’m the one that when I speak people say “Oh no, you never know what will come out of her mouth.”  I like that about me.  Hell no, I love it!  We have known since the beginning what was expected of us.  The oldest was the nice one, the next was the one that was crazy, the third was the one with the attitude, and I was the one with the mouth.  It’s nice when you don’t have to work to exceed people’s expectations.  None of us has changed much.  My oldest sister is still the nice one, but considering what the other three of us are like it wasn’t much of a contest.

She is the first of the three of the vag sister’s to have a birthday this month, plus the non-vag sister has a birthday this month as well.  Oh yes, I will be writing about all of them.  It will be the truth as I see it.  And the truth, as I see it is … for an ancient relic, my sis does okay.  She has put up with, and is still putting up with, a lot of unnecessary crap.  She will continue to put up with it because that is her way.  She is a nurturer.  She will take care of those she cares for and put herself aside.  She will read this and see the truth in the parts where the truth lies.  The places where I have taken liberties will make her smile, because she knows me and she knows that I only harass the people I love.  Happy 70th birthday sis!  I love you a lot.