Magpies

By now you are all quite familiar with my little sis, Magpie. She's the funny sister, and, depending on whom you ask, also the pretty sister, the fun sister, the successful sister (career + husband + baby), the forgiving sister, the artistic sister, and now that I'm shacked up with Hawk, the good sister, too.

Well you know what? I'm the tall sister and I was here first!

I'm off topic. The topic was supposed to be that because Magpie, Mum and I had a lovely girls' night last week for the first time in what felt like ages, I wanted to write a post about Magpie.

We went to Transcend, had hot drinks and cookies, and chatted for a couple of hours. The evening was a very pleasant one. It started out as a party: Hawk's good buddy was still at our place, and we invited Mum, Magpie, Noolbenger, and Cobrastarshine for dinner. I made taco salad without spilling taco meat on any of my appendages. After dinner, there were some shenanigans with the camera:

I think there is a baby in this photo, too. Otherwise, I don't know what Noolbenger is looking at.

I give up protecting Cobrastarshine's identity with black bars over his eyes. When he hits puberty, he's either gonna think this is awesome and I'm the best Aunty ever, or hate me for the rest of his life. It's a gamble I've got to take for the sake of my art.

Then the boys went their separate ways, Hawk and co. to write, Noolbenger and Cobrastarshine to their home in Dovercourt. Finally, the girls were free!

There are no photographs to document the next several hours because that shit got crazy.

Anyway, that's not the point of the story. The point is, the good conversation Mum, Magpie and I had made me want to blog about Magpie.

But how do I go about this? Do I try to define the essential Magpieness of Magpie?

Or instead, do I tell MORE AWESOME MAGPIE STORIES?

That's what I thought.

Story time!

I'll work backward in time. The other day, when everyone was here, I guess I left my massive to-do list out. Magpie saw it and added to it. When I saw her addition, I had no choice but to check it off and send her a picture. The subject of my email was "Done and Done".

It says "Eat Poops". I crossed it out and double check-marked it for comedic effect.

Her reply to my email?

"i'm so funny"

I only get to see Magpie about once a week. That's pretty good for most sisters, I guess, but we lived together for years and worked together for years. Now that she's on maternity leave, I think it's safe to say we're both in sista withdrawl. Sure we used to get into raging fights and hated each other for large swathes of our teenage years, but I think now that we are adults, we can finally fully appreciate each other.

She's been drawing a sketch a day and I think she's got an idea generator. When it told her to draw her BEST FRIEND, I instructed her to draw ME. She agreed, not even very reluctantly. However. I have not yet seen this picture. It's been several days. I'm getting worried it might be a picture of her husband or the dog or WORSE! Another WOMAN!

Because we're besties, we send each other LOTS of emails. (Example to follow. Let me get there already). I was saving this one in hopes that there'd be more like it, and I could do a post that was all Home Maintenance by Magpie, but alas, nothing in ages. So, I think I will end this post about Magpie in Magpie's voice.

So yesterday I started doing some outdoor home maintenance that I always gotsta do in the summer.  Like trimming stuff, mowing blah blah, sweeping the siding.  I was working on the front step when I noticed that the "1" in 13303 was missing.  I wasn't sure how long it hadn't been there, but was pretty certain I had just swept it away.  I looked all over.  Could not find the "1".  So, I made my OWN.  This is the far away shot.  Looks...okay.  But in the next email you see that no.  It does not look okay.

This is an upclose shot.  Yep.  Cardboard, permanent marker and duct tape.  I know.  I am amazing.

There is something missing from the list at the beginning of the blog. She's also the resourceful sister. If she weren't so damn funny and self-deprecating, no one would notice how hilarious that 1 looks. How many people do you know can solve problems and be hilarious at the same time?

Dear god, I hope she sent me those photos with the intent of publishing them ...