Quincheck revisited

On my half-sister's fifth birthday, she walked into her mother's bedroom and asked if she knew what day it was. Her mother, no doubt recalling the birth of the ten-pound butterball, answered in the affirmative. My sister gleefully informed her, "it's the year of five!"

Today starts the year of twenty-four.
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July 22
Are you going to eat those tots? [Getting tatted]
My sister convinced me to play hooky from work on Wednesday so we could spend the day at Panama City Beach bonding - okay, so she didn't have to try that hard to convince me...er, it might have been my idea. With our fifteen year age difference, I told her we'd stay until someone asked if I was her mother.

We lugged our big ass cooler, towels, paraphenalia and music down to the beach as a few clouds starting rolling in. [Sidenote: she's afraid of shark attacks, so she really wanted to lay out at one of the pools belonging to a beach hotel...which makes going to the beach seem rather ridiculous, if you ask me. I did manage to get her in the water up to her waist, though...before I started throwing chopped up fish guts around her]. By the end of the first hour, the sky had turned black and we were not nearly drunk enough to head home. Given my track record for all things impulsive, it should come as no surprise that we decided to get matching tattoos.

Our last name starts with a Q... as much pride as we have in it and our heritage, you would think it's a powerful, mystical name, that simultaneously inspires awe and fear. All my aunts (5 of them) and many female cousins have changed their middle names to our family name once they get married, just because we love it so much. My sister and I decided to get matching tattoos using a logo my graphic artist aunt had designed years ago that looks something like this:

We are gonna be SUCH a hit at our next family reunion.


January 03
Ask not for whom the ball drops, it drops for thee
Since childhood, I've been responsible and mature for my age. Sometimes, however - particularly with a slightly crazy younger Gemini sister visiting - I throw caution to the wind...and the fog.

12/31/2005: My sister TQ somehow convinced me to wear a little black boob-ilicious dress for our adventure New Year's Eve because it coordinated well with her sleek, backless black pant suit (and then? told everyone I had a boob job and to feel how real they were! Uh...it's called ten pounds, not silicone). Apparently, jeans and t-shirts are the southern dress code for bringing in the New Year in Alabama since we were WAY overdressed the entire evening.

We drank our beer and champagne at her mother's house until around 10:00, then decided to head to a gay bar in town (we both love techno, I might adore gay men, and she prefers to kiss girls...although she seems to be in mutual crush mode with my very male co-worker Chad). We met a couple of friendly women in line for the restroom ("Only one person may enter at a time. Strictly enforced"), but everyone there was a couple, so my drag queen sister and I kissed each other on the cheek when the ball dropped. And the champagne tasted like warm cat piss. Moving on...

We drove through thick fog to the strip club and met Chad in the parking lot. We stayed until last call, then headed to a "private" bar that stays open as long as anyone wants to drink (I'd never heard of this until I moved here, but apparently, as long as you are a "member" with a cheap cardboard name card, the party never ends. This has been my downfall many, many times).

More beer followed, then some guy that wanted my sister to pose with his band, bought us shots of Jagerbombs. I'd have to pinpoint this as the moment she checked out for the evening.

January 8
Sisters Q
I consider myself an only child, with a twenty-three year old sister (we have the same father) and a fourteen year old brother (same late blooming mother), because I was almost an adult when they came along. Instead of sharing a room, fighting over clothes, and learning social skills, I was lost in a book or setting up Monopoly tournaments for me, myself and I.

My sister left yesterday and I'm actually missing her as I find signs of her visit: her ring on my nightstand, Bud Light bottles in the bathroom, the gum stuck to my Cosmo, the black sweater with sparkles she let me borrow...(don't worry, I'm mailing you everything! Probably. Heh).

She's a true extrovert - the one in a room with the sparkly personality that people can't help but want to be near, while I've always been more introverted and reserved. I used to be envious of her ease with strangers and her comparatively easy childhood, but our struggles are simply different and I'm finally able to appreciate our similarities (like singing Van Morrison songs at the top of our lungs in the bar).

She's my anxiety-ridden, music-providing, beer-sharing, crazy-cat-lady-in-training sister and I feel a little less alone in the world with her in it.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
- James Blunt