I think I want to do a post today about my little sister.
Pernille and I have been attached at the hips our entire lives.
Here we are, little-
Pernille’s photo was taken in 1971.
Mine was taken before color film was invented.
I rarely post about my family members because I’m afraid they’ll get mad at me and stop lending me money. Of course, I do post about the smaller children in our family because they always make for good stories and they don’t have any money anyway, so really, why spare them? I ask.
My sister has some serious man skills- as in skills that are stereotypically masculine. Her talents should not go undocumented for one more day.
You see, she can repair toasters and computers and put up dry wall and cut massive bathroom tiles with a ginormous tile cutter the size of a Volkswagen Beetle that she carries up the hill to her house, all by herself. Because she’s that strong.
She has like Schwarzenegger sized biceps that her husband forces her to show everyone when he’s had a little too much to drink or forgets to take his Adderall- or both.
In fact, her huge biceps were one of the selling points that my sister’s youngest son used to get my brother in law to marry her (did you follow that?). My then 8 year old nephew said to my now brother in law “Have you seen Mom’s muscles?, Man they are HUGE! even the doctor says so“. And then brother in law was so smitten that he married her right there on the spot, because he always wanted a pair of muscles.
(I have to say, in case you think I am being mean to my brother in law- that we have been friends for over 16 years so he won’t be offended that I may or may not have implied to the Internets that he has a drinking problem, has ADHD and has no muscle tone to speak of.
Anyway, Pernille and I were roommates even after the 16 years we spent together in our parent’s house. While we were living together in Denmark we had to move from one apartment to another.
Here is a picture of us that has nothing to do with living together or moving. In fact, it was taken much later, like in the nineties just as the back pack purse craze was sweeping the nation. Unfortunately there is also a penis in the photo. I thought about erasing it. Pernille suggested that I digitally enhance it- I ended up doing neither because I have better things to do than Photoshop wieners all day long.
Does anyone else think it is kind of funny that David ran off to battle Goliath and didn’t even bother to put on a pair of underwear?
okay back to the move. I became overwhelmed by this move because I don’t like to lift heavy objects or do things that make me dirty or physically tired. I whined alot and my sister needed to get me out of the way, so she just planted me in one of those cozy little European sidewalk Cafes, where I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Machiattos and eating dainty little finger sandwiches, while she moved the entire apartment by herself!
She even moved our third roommate, who was still sleeping, on a mattress that had to be moved out.Third roommate never even noticed that she had been put into the back of a moving truck and taken across town, carried up 3 flights of stairs and deposited in her new room. Granted Third roommate was seriously tiny and seriously hungover and could easily have been overlooked anyway.
(By the way- because Third roommate very well could be reading this, I have to explain that this incident occurred many years ago and she is now a respectable mother of 2 teenage girls, has a job with real responsibilities and hardly ever passes out drunk anymore, I don’t think….).
Anyway, my sister never even complained. She NEVER complains. Which makes her seem kind of like a saint. A giant muscled saint.
It is truly a wonder that we are related by blood. Because I am such a complainer, a glass half empty kind of girl. And I have no man skills- come to think of it, I don’t have an overabundance of woman skills either. Once I attempted to iron my blouse with an electronic golf putter, while my sister quietly watched me until she finally could take no more and yelled ‘what the hell is wrong with you!‘.
I swear there is a point to this story.
I think the point is that Pernille very well could be one of the 7 wonders of the world. When she was born the OBGYN stated that she was the most beautiful child he had ever delivered (although I bet he says that to all the babies), she has freakishly long legs, is super smart, highly astute, patient, strong like bull and intimidatingly sensible which makes her seem really mysterious in that Hollywood leading lady kinda way. She has a highly developed moron radar that unfortunately is frequently pointed and beeping loudly in my direction- or in my brother in law’s direction. I sometimes wonder why such a smart person would voluntarily surround herself with so many morons.
This is brother in law
Just as an example of what she has to endure between me and her husband, I give you here a recent conversations between us.
Pernille (sister): Did you know that the population of Maryland is the same as the entire country of Denmark?
Charlotte (me): Really? Hmmm, I don’t think that is correct because the currency of the Danish Krone just went way up compared to the dollar.
Pernille (sister): What?
Charlotte (me): Well if you divide the dollar by the Krone it is nowhere near 5 million.
Pernille (sister): What the hell are you talking about? What does the currency have to do with the population?
Charlotte (me): Huh?
Or like when I called and interrupted her in the middle of an important phone convesation to ask her whether she spoke English or Danish to her dog.
If I didn’t have my sister around I would likely be living in a commune somewhere in New Mexico, with 17 adopted children and no money- Which is exactly why I had my nephew show my best friend his mom’s biceps, so that he would marry her and bring her to America to keep me off of the streets. And it worked!
I wanted to leave you with a photo of my sister and her biceps, but when I asked her to pose like a bodybuilder, once again I got the ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’ reaction. So this will just have to do.
And I must not forget the formation of the Catonsville bike club that motivated Josie to ditch her training wheels.
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