The mildest, drowsiest sister has been known to turn tiger if her sibling is in trouble. To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were. We know each other's hearts. We share private family jokes. We remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. We live outside the touch of time. ~Clara Ortega

Spent a few days at my brother's house in Portland this week, painting "Thyme Green" and "Moonshine" trim (does that make you want a fresh herb salad with a cold whiskey chaser?). I had painted our house (in Yakima) three times and had assured Brian and Anne it was "easy", no problem, glad to do it (and even more glad to accept a donation to my personal benevolence fund). I had forgotten that my past experience involved little ones underfoot. So the job had been done at naptimes and in cool evenings-an hour here, 3 hours there- until weeks later the job was complete. I soon found out that all day manual labor is another story, entirely.
John once mistakenly described Sam's birth to a co-worker as "easy" because it was a 4 hour labor. He was quickly corrected by the Laborer, that although it could be called "quick", it-was-not-for-a-teensy-second-easy. The house job was quite similar. We rented a spray gun and I will never use a roller brush again, this was so much faster. Masking off windows, hand-painting edges, spraying, spreading dropcloths, 2 coats of trim and working pretty much nonstop, we finished the job in 2 days, (thanks due to copious amounts of caffeine). It helped immensely to joke with my brother as we worked. We have the same weird sense of humor, though he is actually funny. While I was the glasses wearing book-wormy nerd during our Elementary years, my brother was the class clown and immensely popular. (despite owning only 1 pair of Britannica jeans. and a tendency to grow monstrous scabbed canker sores on his upper lip. and a lot of brown striped velour shirts. you see how truly funny he must've been.)
As we were painting, Josiah was helping. After observing the blood, sweat and tears (literally. We painted behind climbing roses. BLOOD. We climbed up and down ladders. SWEAT. and the only way to paint the eaves is to point the sprayer up and grimace as latex splatters across your corneas. TEARS.) this smart little firstborn said "I am never going to paint MY house!" to which I replied "of course not, son. God didn't give YOU an older sister."
poor kid.

Siblings are the people we practice on, the people who teach us about fairness and cooperation and kindness and caring - quite often the hard way. ~Pamela Dugdale