Best Birthday Wishes

My relationship with my sister began with her peeing on me as an infant.  I would like to share some memories.

She used to feed my brother and me salted thistle down, wrapped in maple leaves.  

She rented out hollow spaces in the rose bush, which we not only paid for, but inhabited.  

Speaking of that rose bush, she used to throw our most prized possessions into the top of it, where they were then rendered irretrievable.  For Duncan it was usually sticks, for me it was often things like shoes.

Once she accused me of cheating at Monopoly, so I went to her room and cut up all of her (not play) money into tiny pieces and sprinkled it on her bed.  

Another time she threw all of my makeup out of the upstairs bathroom window, so I dumped two bottles of nail polish in her underwear drawer, and I think she sprayed the walls of my bedroom with an entire bottle of old lady perfume, but that may have been the conclusion of another fight.

She had a cat that she trained to poop on my bed.

When we had geese, I was convinced that the geese were her personal evil minions and slaves, sent to destroy me.

We used to wander through the redwoods and give them all first names.

She introduced me to the important literary genres that are romance, historical romance, and gothic romance.

Sometimes she'll buy clothes for herself, but then give them to me because she thinks that I would like them more.

She bakes.  Regularly.

She has a freaky-good memory.  I have a really good memory, but my sister will recount with perfect accuracy a conversation you had with her when you were six and she was nine, and honestly remembers things from before her first birthday.  She started beating adults at memory games when she was about four years old.  And she remembers EVERYONE'S birthdays.  I remember the birthdays of my friends and family.  Laura remembers the birthdays of everyone.  Even people she hasn't met, and you just mentioned in passing that it was so-and-so's birthday.

Well today it's her birthday, and she's 29, and I hope it's a lovely day.