I’ve had the same older brother since I was born. I’ve had my same younger brother for twenty eight years. My baby sister? Well, I’ve had her as my sister for almost twenty six years. When I think back to my childhood, there are very few memories that don’t have one of them as my co-star. And if they weren’t staring in one of my memories, they were there as supporting characters or maybe even a member of the choir.

I spent the first twenty five years of my life living within a two hour drive of my parent’s house. I never went more then a week without seeing some member of my family. When my older brother moved three hours away to go to college, I would drive out to see him once a month.

I wouldn’t say that my siblings and I were particular close, but we were around each other a lot. Especially since both my parents worked full time and the older siblings (me) had to babysit the younger ones. A lot.

As a teenager I don’t think I could have imagined a time when my siblings wouldn’t play a major role in my life. They were just around and I assumed they would always be there.

I’m thirty three now. I talk to my sister on the phone, probably, every other day. We e-mail numerous times during the day. While we have nothing at all in common, she’s one of my closets friends. I talk to my younger brother on the phone every few months. It’s not that we don’t like each other. I think we don’t talk more simply because he’s a boy and I’m a girl. When I do talk to him I love it. But neither one of us makes the effort to talk more. My older brother lives 4 blocks from our new house. It takes less then five minutes to walk to his apartment. I’ve seen him twice in the last year.

When I stop to think about this I get sad. How can these people who played such a major role in my life make only sporadic guest appearances now that we’re older? Is it because they are the one who know my secrets? Do I not talk to my younger brother more often because he’s one of the few who can remember all my slimy boyfriends? Do I distance myself from my older brother because he knew me when overalls were the crowing moment in fashion?

My dad is one of nine siblings. He’s one of the older siblings, so when his mom died he and my mom ended up with five of his younger siblings. They raised the two youngest brothers from the time they were eleven. While they were all born in West Virginia eight of the nine siblings live in Utah.

And yet, there are some of my dad’s siblings that I’ve never even met. I wouldn’t recognize most of them if I passed them on the street. I might be able to name most of my cousins, but I’d never be able to pick them out of a line up if my life depended on it.

My dad’s been trying to get his siblings all together for the past six months. Last Friday five of them met at my parents house. They sat under the tree, eating BBQ and sharing stories most of them had long forgotten. All of them showed up with a few precious pictures from their childhood. Most of the pictures had never been shared. They passed the pictures around while they laughed and cried about the years long gone. My dad scanned every last picture and made a disk for all of them to take home. He’s mailing me my own copy.

I talked to my mom last night about the family reunion. She said it was magical. Some of them hadn’t seen each other in over thirty years. Four of the nine siblings decided not to show up for the reunion. When my mom called one of them earlier in the week to remind him to come, he told my mom he was happy in his life and didn’t feel the need to mess with that. She understood. Another one is too sick and frail to travel. One said she would be there, and then never showed up. And one of them, well, nobody’s heard from him in over ten years. They assume he’s dead, but they don’t know.

I can’t imagine not seeing my brother in over thirty years. I don’t want that. I want Babboo to know the wonderful people that I lived with during my younger days. Heck, I want to know them too.

I guess that means I need to pick up the phone and make more of an effort.

So tell me, what are your thoughts on your relationship with your siblings?

Like most of you I use the interweb for many numbers of things. My list looks something like this (in no particular order):

• Blogging
• E-mail (oh how I love thee!)
• Stalking old boyfriends
• Shopping
• News
• And by “news” I mean “reading gossip”
• Song lyrics

That’s right, I’m constantly googling the lyrics for all my favorite songs.

Remember back when we had to buy CD’s (or better yet, cassette tapes)? I used to get extra excited when the CD included lyrics in the liner notes. I totally remember that Bon Jovi’s “New Jersey” had the lyrics included, but that very few of my Beatles albums did. (I chalked this up to The Beatles being all deep and wanting you to figure out the lyrics for yourself.)

I don’t know what it is about being me, but I have to know what a singer is singing about. The times when teenage Isabel didn’t have access to the liner notes (and long before the interweb was invented), I used to keep notebooks of the lyrics to my favorite songs. I would sit in my bedroom, starting and stopping my tape deck while I frantically wrote out the lyrics to my current fave song.

Some songs were easy to figure out the lyrics to. Some were harder. Especially the long ones. Dude, have you ever listened to Don McLean’s “American Pie”? It’s like a 6 minute song with all sorts of confusing lines like “And while Lennon read a book of Marx”, which totally didn’t make sense to my 14 year old self.

And let’s not even get started on Arlo Gunthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”. That song is like 20 minutes long. (And yes, I totally have it all written down in some long lost notebook in my mom’s basement.)

(And we wonder why I didn’t date much in high school. I was busy sitting in my bedroom keeping notebooks of song lyrics.)

(Yeah, I guess we don’t wonder, do we?)

Sometimes it wasn’t until I’d hear one of my friends singing along that I’d realize I’d misheard the lyrics and had it written down all wrong. I’d have to listen and relisten to the song to try to figure out how I’d managed to hear it all wrong. Most of the time I couldn’t decipher the correct lyric and wasn’t sure how my friend, brother, or aunt could hear it differently then I did.

It’s been as I’ve gotten older and listened to some of my old music that I realize not only did I have the lyrics wrong, but I had the whole meaning of the song wrong.

While visiting my family in Utah a few weeks ago my dad commented on the song that’s my current ring tone. “Question” by the Old 97’s is, clearly, a song about a a guy proposing marriage to a lady. Clearly. But my dad was all, “I hate that song. It’s all about this guy trying to trick this girl isn’t having sex with him!” My mom and I both started to laugh and I began to assure my dad that wasn’t the case at all. Of course he wouldn’t listen to me.

The best one was when my friend said he realized the Bullet Boys song wasn’t really about a girl named Maginia, and was in fact a song called “Smooth Up In Ya”. As an 11 year old boy he just assumed the song was called “Smooth Maginia”, because really, “smooth up in ya” meant nothing to him (yet).

So tell me, what song lyric or song meaning did you totally have wrong and how did you finally figure it out?

(And also, who in the crap is the Bullet Boys? I had no idea who sang the song “Smooth Up In Ya”. Thank goodness for google.)

The great interweb pilgrimage to San Francisco begins today. And while I chose to not attend this year, I’m still feeling a little pang of regret for not booking a flight. Instead of wallowing in the sadness of missed friends and parties (and maybe celebrities?), let’s instead talk about The King’s National Nude Day (NND) proposal.

What is National Nude Day, you ask?

Well, you can probably deduce that it’s a day where people are nude.

You’re right, nudity is involved.

You can also probably deduce that it’s a National thing.

Okay, it’s really not. It’s more of a world wide holiday then just an American holiday. But National Nude Day sounds better then World Wide Nude Day. Plus, I’m not sure how it would translate into every single language. So we’re sticking with National in this instance.

So what are the specifics of this proposed National Nude Day?

Well, head over to AndSoSheBlogs to read my guest post which offers up more information about National Nude Day. And join the discussion as how you’d present yourself on this very special occasion.

For the record, I’d probably choose to wear the shoes I’m wearing today on the next National Nude Day:

And, of course, a little glitter.

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Don’t forget to check out today’s episode of “Fresh Air” on NPR.  Dude, Rhett Miller (aka: The Serial Ladykiller) is Terry Gross’ guest.  You know I’m going to be listening in.  (Apparently it will be online at 3:00 p.m. ET.)

Reasons I like riding the bus:

• I can spend my commute listening to music and NPR on my iPod.
• My work pays for my bus pass.
• Don’t have to be stuck in traffic.
• Sitting next to hott business men on a small bus seat is always a good thing.
• Uninterrupted reading time.
• Pretty views of the city.
• Good for the planet.
• Not having to pay for parking in downtown Seattle.

Reasons why I hate riding the bus:

• The bus hates pretty shoes. (Please see Exhibit A)

Exhibit A:

Oh yes, the bus totally ate my boot heel. Nothing like trying to carry your toddler up the hill to your house on a jacked up heel.

So tell me, is it possible to look pretty while walking around on a jacked up boot heel?

I woke up extra early yesterday to ensure I would get to work a little early.  I wanted to make sure I got off a little early.

I raced to pick up Babboo at school. Then we raced home.  I frantically got the meat for dinner doused in marinade while crazily throwing sunscreen, water bottles and swim diapers into the backpack.

I took my work clothes off and threw them on the bedroom floor while I shimmied into my bikini and cover up.  Babboo and I put our sandals on, I grabbed a blanket and my sunglasses and we raced out to load the car.

I open the sunroof; pumped up some Old 97’s on the stereo and we drove the 45 minutes to meet up with some old friends at the wading pool at a city park.

“Do you want to go swimming with Bronzx and her mommy?”

“Yes!”

“Do you want to put your swim diaper on and get in the water?”

“Oh, Yes.  Babboo want to go swimming!”

“Do you like to swim?”

“Oh yes!”

Finally(!) we got to the park.  I parked the car, loaded my arms up with all of our gear and we hurried to find our friends, who were waiting for us.

I put the blanket down on the grass and, for the first time that day, relaxed a bit.  I got Babboo all ready to get in the water, the entire time asking him if he was excited to get in the water.

Oh yes, he was very excited.

Once he got in the water, all he wanted to do was this:

“Don’t you want to play in the water?”

“No.  Babboo sit.”

“Do you want to go and splash over there with Bronx?”

“No. Sit here.”

“Well, at least smile for mommy.”

And that’s how the rest of our afternoon went.

Fun times.

Like most college aged girls I spent most of those years making out with loads of different fellows. As in every weekend I was macking on a new boy. This is totally normal, right? And totally fun, right? And totally how every girl should spend her pre-married days, right?

When I say I was “making out” with these boys you understand that I mean “kissing”, right? I was, by no means, doing anything more with these boys.

Simply, innocently kissing.

(Okay, maybe “innocently” isn’t the right world. But you get my drift.)

During this time I felt the need to tell my mom about all the fun I was having away at college. I would call her and tell her about the latest weekend fun with the latest new boy.

“Mom, I totally got with this cute boy from the drama department on Friday night. His name was Jim and he was blonde. Dreamy.”

“I’m glad you’re having fun Isabel.”

And then we’d talk about something else. While I may have been dumb enough to tell my mom about making out with boys, I was smart enough to not give her details. That would have definitely been crossing the lines.

The next week an identical phone conversation would take place:

“Mom, I met this cute Hispanic boy and we totally got together this weekend.”

“Oh lovely. I made pizza for dinner tonight.”

And so the story continued like this. For years. I would call and tell my mom about my latest kissing partner and she would offer support and then move on to a new topic.

Eventually I got older and wiser and stopped making out so much with random dudes. And I got married. I was now an adult and could have real live adult conversations with other adults. Like my mom.

One day we were discussing how silly I was when I was younger and kissing all those different random boys. My mom looked at me with shock in her eyes.

“You were only kissing those boys?!”

“Yes mom! Only kissing! What in the crap did you think I was doing with them?!”

“I thought you were having sex with all of them!”

“FOR THE LOVE OF PETE! I was only kissing them.”

And then my head exploded.

What kind of Slutty McSlutterson did my mother think I was?  Dude, no girl would have been sleeping with the amount of boys I was kissing.  Really, the number is astounding.
It was bad knowing that my mom had thought her daughter was ultra-loose for so many years. What made it even worse was the fact that NOT ONCE did my mom ever say, “You know, I’m really not comfortable hearing about your sexual escapades.  But, are you using protection?  Are you being careful?”

Dude, she totally just blew the whole thing off.

FOR YEARS.

I don’t know how the rest of you were raised, but where I come from we do not have sex before we are married.  We just don’t.  It was probably bad enough that I was kissing so many boys.  There was no way I was sleeping with all of them.

Holy crap, mom.

I’m sure my mom worried and fretted about the state of her daughters eternal soul.  And yet, she never talked to me about this.  Heck, she never even wrote me a letter discussing her concern.  (She didn’t even send me an anonymous card with a copy of some scriptures.  Or a pack of condoms.)  Nothing!

I’m not sure what I would have wanted my mom to say to me back during those days.  I wish she would have said something, just so I could tell her it was all a communication problem.  That would have saved her years of fretting and worrying.

Or maybe, she wasn’t worried.

Crap. That might be even worse.

So tell me, what’s the worst communication problem you’ve encountered?  And, like me, did it involve your parent being a dumb a@@?