Who I Want To Be

Coolest Person in the World

For a long time now I've wanted to be my little sister. She makes things I want to do look effortless. I want to be a photographer. She's a gifted photographer. I want to speak Spanish. She speaks fluent Spanish. I want to live in Missouri, you should see her COMO house :-) (You get the idea.)

It sounds like the perfect recipe for envy or jealousy or something else you could characterize as one of those seven deadly sin thingies. But the truth is I want to be my sister because her insides and her outsides are profoundly amazing. I look at her and feel so much admiration and pride. It feels a little like wanting to be a better person because you're around better people.

She is also one of the extremely limited number of living souls who understands what is happening inside my mind, and can accurately finish my sentences when my words won't come. The African proverb "Ubuntu" - I am because you are - probably wasn't crafted with two western white women in mind, but there is no better definition for who and what she is to me. I can become irritated with her and vice versa, but in the end, I am who I am because she is who she is, and there's nothing I am that hasn't been made better since she became a part of my life. Our parents got it right when they gave our family its Shauna.

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Ordinarily I don't plug things, but my baby sister's photography is the bomb, and well worth a look. Check it out, and marvel at its awesomeness.

http://www.shaunamphotography.com/

Free and Clear

SOMETHING I DIDN'T POST IN 2010
This little guy was hanging out in my draft folder. Since this was written, we've sold the truck, moved out of state, found out Mason has Chron's, I got a new job and my family came back to Columbia. But the more things change, the more they stay the same . . . case in point:

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You know what's cool? I can write anything, ANYTHING, in this blog, and Monte will never read it because it's too "wordy." It's awesome really. I can say whatever I want, reveal embarrassing facts, make pointed remarks, because there's no payback. Ever. It's a blank check.

Dang it. The handicap is that I love him. Rats.

P.S. Monte's aversion to reading is topped only by his aversion to listening to long winded explanations. If you want him to pay attention to you, say it in three words or less. Preferably less. I left him a long message on the phone the other day, explaining how I'd hit a trash can outside Starbucks, and got a scratch down the side of his truck, and how I wanted to take the truck to the body shop and get it fixed right away, and how I was so sorry, and the truck is so big and hard to drive and I would some how make it up that I had ruined the truck, and that I had already talked to the guy at Machens Ford Auto Body and how I was so so so sorry. I was on the verge of tears during the three and a half minute message. His reply? He didn't listen to it all, because it got kind of long winded, but it was something about the truck, right?

Seriously.