An E-mail thread between my younger sister, who lives in Utah, and me yesterday:

Sister: Do you have tomorrow off from work?

Isabel: Why would I have a random Thursday off?

Sister: My husband has it off. I thought maybe you and The King would too.

Isabel: (confused at this point.) Yeah, we don’t have it off. We’ll both be working on Thursday this week. As per usual.

Sister: But it’s the 24^th of July tomorrow.

Isabel: You’re right, tomorrow is the 24^th of July. And today is the 23^rd of July. So what?

Sister: The 24^th of July is Pioneer Day. Remember?

Isabel: Now I remember. But you realize Pioneer Day is strictly a Utah holiday. And more importantly it’s strictly a Mormon holiday? Nobody outside of Utah has any idea that the 24^th of July is a real holiday.

Sister: So you don’t have tomorrow off from work?

Isabel: (shaking my head as I type out my response to her!) Yeah, I don’t have it off from work.

Sister: And The King?

Isabel: Yeah, he’ll be working too.

(Lil Isabel on Pioneer Day, 1978)

Happy Pioneer Day, bitches!  And to quote my friend Becky, “remember to thank your ancestors for coming here today!”

Will do!

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.)

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@@?

I remember, years ago, when a certain “diet pill” was on the market. It seemed like every adult in my small town was on it. I watched as all the customers at the convenient store (yes, that’s what we called it) I worked at literally shrunk before my eyes. I remember this one specific woman who was losing weight at a very fast (and very unhealthy) rate. Every week she’d walk into the store wearing a new outfit, showing off more of her thinning frame then the week before. You could see how happy she was by the new spring in her step and the sparkle in her eyes. She loved being thinner. She became more talkative and outspoken. She started to flirt with the male customers.

I was thrilled to see how being a smaller size made this woman seem to love life so much more. I imagined what it must be like to be her and enjoying herself for the first time in maybe twenty years. I was young back then and didn’t truly understand the pressures of marriage, kids, and just life in general. I also didn’t understand the feeling of being older and not being content with how you looked on the outside.

All I saw was that she was happier. And much more confident.
I remember thinking that instead of some magic diet pill someone should invent a pill that gave you self confidence. It wasn’t being thinner that made people happy, it was just the confidence that made them happier.

At least that was my perception.

It’s funny what a little confidence can do.

I really do fine it interesting that somebody hasn’t invented a pill form of confidence yet. Dude, get on it.

And it’s funny what people gain their confidence from.

Alcohol is often referred to as liquid confidence, right? I imagine that’s one big reason why people drink in social circumstances. If I was a drinker, you know I’d be drinking any time I had to go out in public or had to be around people at all.

(By the sounds of that last paragraph, it’s a darn good thing I don’t drink.)

(Thank you, Jesus, for helping me not be a [confident] lush.)

I think I gain my own dose of confidence when I’m dealing with something I’m comfortable with. Like if I’m in charge of a certain project at work and I know the ins and out of the project, then I’m all about rocking my confidence. If I’m in a room full of people that love TV and want to talk about TV…dude, I’m the most confident person in the room.

It’s when I find myself surrounded by people that like to camp. Or mountain bike. Or go on hikes. Or run races. Yeah, I’m the one over in the corner being all nervous and crap.

So not confident with that subject matter.

I’m confident with public speaking. But only when I’ve been given ample time to prepare what I’m speaking about. And as long as I like the topic. (Yeah, like the one time I was asked to speak in church about the Reformation. Um yeah, I know nothing on the subject.)

I’m confident with my Weight Watcher chocolate chip cookie making skills. So much so that I entered a cookie backing contest at work last month. (I didn’t win. The contest was fixed. I’m just saying.)

I’m confident with my knowledge of all things Rhett Miller and Old 97’s.  Oh yes, those topics give me confidence.  (But not enough to make me confident in Rhett’s presence.)

I guess as I get older I gain more confidence in myself. Or rather, I’ve learned to not put myself in situations where I’m all wobbly and speak incoherently about subjects I know nothing about. Pretty much I steer clear of REI and people that like to hike in their spare time.

(Well, except for my bestest friend from high school and her damn hippie husband.) (I heart them.)

That doesn’t leave me much, I guess.  It just means I’m stuck only being confident when I’m speaking publicly at work, about Rhett Miller and television, while serving chocolate chip cookies.

Holy crap.  I suck.

So tell me, what would you do if you had a prescription for Confidence, in a pill form?

It’s no secret that I struggle with my look. I think the majority of grown women do. Am I right? I would be crazy to pass up on Casey Moosh’s offer to pay for a lucky blogger to get a new hair-do. I’d be ever crazier to pass this up since the all-powerful Whoorl and her Hair Thursday magic are involved.

Today we will be looking at pictures of my hair-past. Why you ask? Because I said so. And because sometimes you must share things with the internet in order to win a free hair make-over. Especially if you have a horrid hair-past like I do.

It all started when my mom, who it must be noted is a licensed hair cutter person, didn’t know what to do with my crazy toddler hair. Do you put it in little pig-tails? Do you put it in spongy curlers? Do you bother to comb it?

Heck no, you just cut the damn hair off and forget it ever existed. (Hey wait, are the couch cushions different from the couch? I’m going to have to talk to my Mom about that one.)

I mean who doesn’t love a little girl with hair shorter then most little boys? Compare my hair length to that of my older brothers. It’s neck and neck. Also, is that the exact same cut my mom is rocking?

I think it is.

See how I gave you a few cute pictures of me before I throw this bad boy in your face? Boo-ya, I present nose-picker sitting in front of a very creepy empty fireplace wearing a very odd jumpsuit. With maroon socks.

Looks like my mom was letting me grow my hair out a bit.

Good thinking mom. The extra length definitely takes away from the booger picking.

Clearly my father was a professional photographer. Check out this artsy photo of me. What you can’t see (because it’s B&W) is that my coat is rainbow colored. Very 70’s chic.

Here I’m sporting bangs. And a very pensive look. I call this portrait, “How Can I End World Hunger?”

Here’s where it all starts to get ugly. I don’t know about you, but I had a very intense awkward phase. It started the day I began the 6th grade and ended, well, it is just now starting to wind down. I would ask that you be kind and understanding. It would also help if you tried to remember back to your own awkward phase.

Continue at your own risk.

(You have been warned.)

(Seriously.)

My white sandals go great with the flannel shirt and shorts I’m sporting. My Mom made sure to never dress me in pink. As you can see that rule didn’t stand for my younger sister.

Who, by the looks of this picture, had some sort of itch.

(What’s the worst thing in this picture? My bangs or my sister’s itch?)
We all know that the 80’s look is currently very trendy. Too bad I didn’t hold on to this sweater that I got for Christmas in 1986. (What in the hell is my younger brother doing in this picture? Maybe he got my sister’s itch from using the toilet after she did.)

I had bangs for quite a few years prior to the whole Bigger Bang thing that was introduced to Utah (and the world) in the 80’s.

I rocked the straight cut bangs for years.

Not only was this awkward phase um, awkward, but I was also a little chubby. I assure you it was only baby fat and would leave by the time I was 25 35 (maybe?). The horizontal striped shirts I insisted on wearing and the pegged pants didn’t help to make me look thinner. Maybe standing in front of a dinosaur will help. And maybe by creating the highest bangs in the history of the world will make my face look thinner.

At least that’s what I was thinking.

Let’s look at a profile shot of from that same day.

Yep, the hair is high. And the pants are pegged.

Shudder.

The same trashy white sandals that I was wearing on the earlier camping trip picture made a second appearance! At least they look better with this skirt. A skirt that I was convinced(!) made me look thin. But only if I sucked in all day long. I wore that skirt all through middle school and junior high. It was good to me.

The bangs, yeah they weren’t as good to me. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Most of junior high was spent in a haze of hair spray. I divided my time between creating complex mathematical equations that would enable me to get my bangs to touch the sky and collecting necklaces to wear on top of each other.

Hey, it was a look.

I also discovered that if I braided my hair at night when it was wet it would look like a real live permanent wave by morning. I was by no means allowed to get one of those horrible perms, so I succumbed to a fake perm.

That’s right, I put my hair in small braids every single night of my life in an attempt to fake the look of a perm.

I also made my own lace for my collars and put shoulder pads in all my dresses. All of this kept me too busy to tweeze my brows. Dude, I was just too busy.

Somewhere between junior high and high school I lost The Bangs. But not before my dad convinced me to get all gussied up for our own at-home-backyard-photo-shoot.

(My dad scanned this picture and sent it to me. He titled it “model”. I’m not kidding.)

I spent my sophomore year doing what every other girl in my grade was doing; growing out my bangs. This took much longer for me since my hair was longer then should be legally allowed. Here I am sporting my First Day of School outfit. Yep, I’m ultra trendy and chose a plain white top. I’m sure all the boys noticed.

I preferred to pull my hair out of my face, but I knew this accentuated my forehead and my damn brows. So I cut a few pieces of hair to shield the head. Marci and I referred to them as “Kreblings” and they remained for years.

Thankfully I was no longer rocking the fake perm from my junior high days. I was, however, still rocking the super duper long hair.

My mom had a strict rule that I must pull some of my hair forward for every picture. She said this was to showcase my gorgeous long hair. Looking back I’m glad I followed her rule. It makes it easier to mock the length of my hair. (Notice how I said “mock” and I’m wearing a mock turtleneck in this photo? I’m clever. I wonder if Whoorl and Casey will give me extra points for that?)

Every picture taken of me has some hair pulled forward for the sake of the picture.

Even random shots had my pulling my hair forward. And I wasn’t even proud of my long hair. Only my mother was.

I didn’t get asked to many boy-choice dances in high school. Surprise, I know. I did go to the (girls-choice) Preference dance with The Most Preferred Junior boy. I lurved him. He was in a wheelchair and the Florence Nightingale effect was in full force.

I put so much time and effort into planning this date, but he picked another girl to escort him during the program. I tried to act like it didn’t bother me. Of course it did.

In an attempt to make this boy notice me, I decided to cut a ton of my hair off and wear a new fancy white bow for the dance.

At the time of this grand hair cutting my hair measured in at a whopping:

I should have done this years before.

My mom probably only cut a foot off, but it was a big deal to me. Nobody else noticed. I think it’s because they were too busy looking at the crazy polka-dot bow that Marci is wearing in this photo. This was smack dab in the middle of our “we must wear huge bows” phase.

My date never spoke to me again after the dance. I guess he wasn’t impressed with the foot of hair I cut off for him. I bet if I would have saved it and presented it to him in a little box he would have liked me more.

After high school and during college I decided to experiment with my hair a little. And by “experiment” I mean I let my drunk ass roommate cut it. And then I bleached it.

I looked so different that even I wasn’t sure this was me in this picture. Since I’m holding my cousin and my sister is standing next to me, I’m pretty sure it is me.

But dude, short and blond is not a good look for Isabel.

And yet, I wore my hair like that for most of my early twenties. Give or take the few days I added some cute little barrettes to jazz up my look.

By the time I met my first husband I had let my hair grow out a little bit. And I quit bleaching it. Thank goodness. He probably wouldn’t have paid me any attention if I had looked all blonde and crazy.

Oh wait, would that have been such a bad thing?

I’m a star!

(A star that sneaks into the local high school to get school pictures taken for cheap. Seriously, I was 21 at this point. And not a student at the high school. I can’t remember why I did this.)

Yeah, my hair was a little poofy and I had fake nails. And eyebrows that go on for days. This is exactly how you catch a man.

A few years later and my hair was slowly growing past my shoulders. (Now my older brother was the one bleaching his hair.)

I am still making the same damn face that I always make in pictures, head slightly tilted, eyes not opened all the way. It’s classic Isabel. Even if I try to not make the pose, I do it. Every time.

(This picture was taken in the middle of my divorce. I was still pretty much a mess. Don’t worry, that didn’t last too long.)

By the time I met The King my hair was long and straight and easy to keep up. I typically had it highlighted and blew it straight every day. I liked it. And I guess The King did to.

And then like most brides, I cut it all off after we got married. (Why oh why do girls do this?) Short hair is not a good look on me. I found this out the hard way and them immediately began growing it back out.

And while my hair is ultra flat and my roots are about two inches long (and yes, my glasses are blue), The King’s hair was big enough for the both of us. (Whoorl and Casey, can The King enter this little contest too?)

After a few years of marriage, adult braces, growing my hair out and learning that my hair’s actually naturally curly, I’m getting more and more used to my current look:

But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do whatever it takes to win Moosh’s make-over contest. Even if I winning means I have to subject myself to the embarrassments of posting 33 years of Isabel’s bad hair for all the interweb to mock.

So tell me, was your awkward phase as horrible and as long as mine was?