Up close and personal, the view from my kitchen window.
One of the books my father enjoyed was "Don't get perkonal with a chicken." It's not as much fun to say things like that when there's no one to recognize its significance. So, like, when I say perkonal, no one knows what I mean.

My sister's birthday was yesterday. One is really supposed to say "Yesterday was my sister's birthday," I think. I play with phrases, too much when I write.

I got to talk to her last night. There's always something sweet and reassuring about talking to a sister (or brother, but I can't do that anymore). I talk to my mother often, so talking to her isn't such a treat. Besides, she's my mother--so much, so way different. Anyway, Mary (who know that was her real name? She has no middle name. Family lore is that, because my parents lived in West Virginia when she was born, everyone asked "Mary what? Mary Lou? Mary Alice? Mary Jane?," so my father, proprietary about his childrens' names, decided it should just be Mary. Does Mary mind that she has no middle name?) says she's now in her 60th year. I'm not far behind--there was 22 months between each child in my family. Coincidence? who knows, my mother used to tell us that, almost boastfully. Anyway, for part of the year my sister is one year older than I am, for most of it she's 2 years older. So how do I feel about having a sister who's in her 60th year? Not bad, but a bit intimidated. I don't want to get older, (though, as they say, it beats the alternative) (don't I use parentheses a lot?) but if I get just a little bit older I might be able to stop working.

We moved a lot when we were kids (no, I don't mean we moved a lot, like dancing all the time or something) (there I go with the paren. again) and something like that does a lot to define who you become. My brother was always a friend when we were new in town, but my sister and I were best friends. Or so I like to believe. We always had each other, to walk to the new school with; to climb the mulberry tree with; to play with our plastic horses with--boy that filled an incredible number of hours; to make the dachshund jump over the broomstick so we could pretend he was a horse; and lots and lots of other things. But never reading. She read, I didn't. I was jealous of the printed word. Ironic now, isn't it. Then there was the year she begged, and begged and begged to have a concrete wall built to divide the bedroom we shared. I was devastated, of course, knowing how much I'd miss her, and suffering greatly at such rejection. My mother's excuse was that it was a rented house so we couldn't do something like that. HAH! My sister saw right through that one. I was too relieved to think anything else. When we finally bought a house and had separate bedrooms, I missed my sister. Later in life we didn't like each other at all--imagine how good I felt when she told me that she didn't like me at all & didn't want to be my sister when we were in high school. I'd felt the same way about her. Ah, secrets of the past. My mother used to tell us that, no matter what we said or felt at the moment, she knew we loved each other. Of course that's always been true.

I'm at work, where the 2 fish tanks are in front of me. One has 4 male guppies--one of each primary color and one left over from the guppy population explosion I had at home. The colorful guppies are very flashy and have big tails. The homemade guppy is sort of grayish-invisible, with a big but not flashy tail. He's about 1/3 the size of the others--I call him Little Man. And there's Blue Man, of course, and Red and Yellow Guy. The other tank has 2 big goldfish in it. Twice a goldfish has jumped out of the tank to its death. The first landed on the floor, the 2nd landed splat on my chair seat. I have a water pump in the bigger tank, and hear the sound of running water all day. It's nice and is a truer sound than the white noise of the heating system.

Since I'm at work, I have to get going on our 2010 Department Goals. There are only 2 of us in the department now so it's easier and more peaceful to do this. Plus the goals can't be quite as lofty. hey lofty.