Like swallows to wherever the hell it is they supposedly go-capasomething? Anyway, there are squirrels in my roof again.

Exciting news: The roof squirrels are back for another season!  There haven’t been any antics thus far–just nest building with squirrel-like materials–but they look to be revving up for something hard core because we see them out there all day long dragging lair building materials up into our porch roof.  Steve caught one of them in action:

And because I’m pms-y and I’d rather systematically destroy the cookies my mom just sent than write something new, here’s a different kid of love story from a couple of years ago.

Loving Each Others

My brothers spent most of their adolescence trying to knock each other’s heads off.  They were best friends. 

For a while I was in on it, too.  I had the distinct advantage of being a normal size adopted kid in a family of short siblings.  As such, I towered over my brothers and was fun to wrestle with.  I remember trudging across our back yard with a football under one arm and a brother attached to each leg.  I always made it to the goal line because, try as they would, those 40 lb boys could not bring me down. 

My physical domination lasted until high school when my brothers shot up, but the tide started to change in middle school after the Battle of the Thumb Tack.  Some time in the spring of 1991, the eldest of my brothers stole a thumb tack from one of my college pennants and used it to tack up his own.  As we only had one box of tacks among the four of us, and about a dozen or so pennants each, every tack was a precious commodity.  I tried to take it back, and my brother almost threw me over the railing of the attic stairs.  When my brothers joined the high school wrestling team a few years later, it was the end of an era.  Sure my little sister was scrappy and we had a few good fights–like the time she slammed my head into the side mirror of my mom’s car when we were both going for the last can of Nestea in the garage, or when we would lunge at each other during a rowdy game of 52 card pick up–but it wasn’t the same.  My brothers might have left me behind, but they still wrestled each other throughout their adolescence (hell, they still do it now).  I remember my mom watching mortified from the kitchen window as my brothers rolled around on the seventeenth green of the golf course behind our house.  What would the neighbors think?  And that was just last week.

My in-laws live 1,252 miles away.  We go to see them about twice a year.  Before the fasten seat belt sign has been turned off, my husband has de-boarded the plane and is trying to pin his brother in Terminal A. 

I see that kind of love now in my daughters.  They can’t hug without falling to the ground.  They hold hands and run as fast as they can, pulling each other in different directions until one or the other dislocates her shoulder.  They spin around and bump into each other and fall down laughing and rolling around with big bumps on their heads and bruises on their knees.  Every once in a while someone will cry, but then she’ll get back up again and clamor for more.  Ella might be taller, but her days are numbered.  The little one isn’t even two yet, and she can take her sister out.  Pretty soon they’ll be equally matched and the real hard loving will start. 

The oldest once told me, “My baby sister is my best and best and best friend and she’ll be my best friend forever.  Even when she’s super big she’ll still be my best friend.  Because we love each others.”  All of this is very sweet, but it also means I’m going to have to stock up on band aids.  I’ve seen what happens when siblings love each others.
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