Izzybella Had a Birthday!

Yesterday was Izzybella's birthday! She didn't do one dang thing that was fun. Nope. Not a thing. She moved. If you've moved before, as I'm sure you have, you know that moving absolutely stinks. Unlike me, she decided to stick with her calendar age this year, although she said she may choose a different age next year. Whatever age she decides to be, she will wear it beautifully.

Let me tell you a little about Izzybella. She is, with the exception of my husband, and sometimes not even excluding him, my best friend. A lot of people don't get that. They aren't really good friends with any of their siblings, and don't understand how she and I can be such good friends. But we just are. Always have been. When my mother was pregnant with her third child, everyone said it was going to be another boy. My brother was elated at the thought of having a baby brother. My dad was bursting his buttons at the thought of siring a second son. My mother spent hours with her Kreskin's ESP thingie asking it if the baby was a boy, and the answer was always a yes. No one listened to me when I said it was a girl.

They should have listened, dangit, because I'm always right! (Except when I'm wrong, of course.)

So on December 11th, 19??, my sister put in her appearance. She has a very strong personality, and made that known from the beginning. One of my chores from the time she was a wee thing, besides changing her diapers, was to get her out of her crib in the morning. Once she was old enough to stand and scream, she would move to the far corner of the crib, after first snatching a handful of my long, lustrous dark brown hair near the roots, and scream, "No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!" My arms weren't long enough to reach to said far corner of the crib and remove her, so I would usually try to disentangle my hair from her fingers and hope I wouldn't go deaf before my mother or father would come and rescue me. Why the hell my mother would put me through such hell every morning was beyond me at the time, although it occurred to me much later that my mother didn't really want to go through that hell either, and figured eventually I'd grow another inch or so and manage to get her out of the damned crib myself, which of course I did, and that stage of purgatory ended.

Being eight years and three days older than my sister, I was her (usually) willing and devoted slave. I spoiled her rotten. I remember this one dress that I fell in love with at the store, and persuaded my mother to buy for her. It had a long blue skirt with a ruffle at the hem, and a white bodice with large blue polka dots. She looked so cute in it that it was absolutely revolting. Whenever I had any money, which wasn't nearly often enough, I liked to buy her things.

Things weren't always perfect in paradise, of course. She and I had our spats. It was the worst when we had to share a bedroom, because she was a neat freak and I was an utter slob. So on the not-rare-enough occasions when we'd be sent to clean our room, she'd be livid because she'd have to help clean up my messes even though she wasn't particularly messy. Usually these spats would end up in us screaming at each other, red-faced with anger, until the humor in the situation dawned upon me and I'd start laughing. That would infuriate her even more, upon which she'd start stomping around. I'd laugh some more, and say something taunting like, "Stomp a little louder, why doncha?" She would then make every effort to stomp louder, which made me laugh more, which pissed her off even more. She couldn't understand then why I was laughing. She thought I was laughing at her. What I was really laughing at was the fact that these two girls, who loved each other more than any other people on the earth, were screaming at each other like nobody's business, over something as insignificant as who threw something under the bed (I did) and who had to pick it up (she did) and was it fair (of course not, but I was the biggest and deal with it already). I was a rotten stinker, and I admit that.

I remember coming home from school or a friend's house or somewhere one day, and finding her with a too-innocent look on her makeup smeared face. With good cause I immediately got furious with her for getting into my makeup. She denied it, and cried because I was picking on her for no reason, and finally admitted it, and all was well. She never did figure out how I knew she'd been in my makeup until several years later.

I didn't know that she used to wear my clothes to school. I left for school/work before she did, and got home after she did. But then one year she made the mistake of wearing one of my Hawaiian shirts on school picture day. When her pictures came, she tried to hide them from me. When I finally insisted on getting one, because I love my sister, dangit, there she was, wearing my shirt. I wasn't too mad about that, although I pretended to be. (My Abbey Road tee-shirt, however, is another matter. ;p)

Her nicknames include Lizardbreath and Zard. She was called Betsy from the moment she was born until she got tired of it and managed to convince everyone in the family that they were never to call her Betsy ever again under pain of death. She was very convincing. I call her Liz or Lizzy or Lizardbreath or Lizardy or Zard or Bubelah or Sugar or Sweetie or Honey or Bit-cah.

When she was young--I don't quite remember how old she was, but her figure was about 18-18-18--she used to sing "Bill Bailey," and she could put quite a Mae West-like growl in the song. It was so cute, and she thought she was so hot and sex-ay.

She used to think I had eyes in the back of my head. Well, that's partly my fault, because I told her I did. Well, come on now--don't most mothers/older sisters say that? You see the kids come in from the back yard dripping wet, and you know they've been playing in the water. But they're not quite bright enough yet to realize that the evidence supports that conclusion, so you tell them you have eyes in the back of your head and they believe you. What I didn't know was that she would wait until I was asleep at night, and then try to find my eyes in the back of my head. But she never could. She decided they were invisible eyes, which made her even more impressed with me. Bwah-hah-hah!

There are other stories I could tell about Izzybella, but I won't. Partly because she'd kill me, and partly because you'd have to have been there. And you weren't. Nyah-nyah-nyah. Just know that she's the best sister a girl could have, and the best friend. I consider myself amazingly blessed to have had her companionship on my journey through life. If you get a chance, go by her blog and wish her a happy birthday.