My sister is getting married soon, so I thought what better time to relive some warm sisterly memories than right now.
As I've discussed in the past, my sister is revoltingly talented. What she wasn't as a child, however, was capable of walking like a human being. For reasons only a 9 year old would understand, her and her friend wanted to be horses. Not to ride horses, but to BE horses.
And what does being a horse encompass you ask? Let me tell you. It means offering to hitch yourself up to large logs in order to pull them like a draft horse. It means perfecting your horse noises (Neigh!). It also, more importantly, means walking and running on all fours. Horses don't walk on two legs after all.
And so they practiced. And they got good. And my sister, who excels in most things, also excelled in this. Over time, the two girls developed a loping kind of canter, a smooth-ish walk, and an ungainly but surprisingly quick gallop, all of which were done on all fours, with legs and arms extended to their fullest. There were times when I truly believed that my sister could move faster on four legs than on two.
As an older sister, the single best part of this for me was that over time they performed these equine feats so frequently that they would appear to forget what they were doing and just drop into horse stance. Anywhere. Literally ANYWHERE.
I would be walking home from school with my sister and suddenly she would drop to all fours and run. It seemed like anytime she started running like a human, there was at least a 40% chance that she would end the run in horse mode. From where I was standing, it was a completely subconscious choice to do this, and it was absolutely hysterical.
My unqualified favourite time this happened was at the local ice rink. We were at public skating, just going around in endless circles when it happened. I guess at some point we achieved critical horse speed, because out of nowhere my sister dropped automatically into horse stance and tried to run.
Now if you've ever experienced ice, you'll know that it isn't known for it's traction. Horses, as a rule, also don't often wear ice skates. Ice, combined with skates designed to glide on ice, and the act of not actually being a horse created a trifecta of disaster which saw my sister face planting on the ice after taking about 2 to 3 loping gallops in public. She wasn't hurt, and I enjoyed the spectacle immensely.
I can tell this story now, because my sister has not been a horse in years, and recently got back from winning a world championship medal with Team Canada's women's paddling team. I'm very proud of her, but I also like closing my eyes and remembering that while she may be athletic and talented now, there was once a time that she tried to run like a horse on the ice and failed spectacularly. Neigh!
So it's been a bit more than a cup of coffee since I've sat down to write anything. I've got a thousand reliable excuses, but the reality is I'm just tired, frustrated, and binge eating m&ms while watching Netflix.
I think a large part of it is that adulting has been steadily chipping away at the armor of my sanity for the last 4 years. In all my time as a homeowner, I've never had even half of the problems we've had since moving here, and it's breaking me down.
I'll caveat this by saying that I realize that my complaints are for the most part solidly first world problems....except the water issues, those throw me down a few "world" levels. We've been very fortunate to be healthy and generally happy as a family.
That said, our problems are still problems. They're still draining emotionally, physically, and financially, and it sucks.
Besides being set upon annually by ants, ticks, wasps, mosquitoes, and a very persistent bear intent upon tearing apart my garden boxes one by one, the house itself seem to dislike having people living in it.
The water situation feels barely liveable some days. We're constantly fighting sediment gumming up
fixtures and appliance, and have had what feels like endless water depletions, as one tap or another won't shut off because some bloody part of it has been worn down by grit.
We do have enough water to basically run the house, but the well we dug to increase the capacity went...poorly. (read about the unstoppable shit show here), and we've decided to give up after paying some jackass more money than I care to think about, for what amounts to an unsightly pipe in my yard. At least we have sufficient water for the house. Small miracles.
We also decided recently to get a high quality (read: expensive) filtration system so that the water doesn't smell and taste quite so terrible, and the persistent sediment is removed. I've had more fart showers than anyone should have to endure, and I'd like to come out of the bath feeling cleaner than I went in for fuckig once. It would also be lovely if the water coming out of my tap didn't kill fish. I don't even like fish, but I feel like if the fish can't survive in the water, I probably shouldn't be consuming it either.
The system went in and for a glorious 2 weeks I had relaxing, fart-free showers. It was the best of times....and then it ended. The $&%$ing system began leaking just enough to be defective, but not wrong enough to get the repair guy in quickly. So for a week and a half I just changed out the towels at the bottom of the tank every couple of days so it didn't form pools. Eventually the guy made it back into town and "fixed" the system, however to date, the tank still leaks and for reasons that I can't explain, I'm back to fart showers.
And then one deceptively quiet evening, three large wall tiles gave up the ghost mid shower. They came right off fucking the wall in my hands. It seems they'd been loose for some time, as behind them was a colourful selection of mold and moist drywall bits. Of course now I'm terrified that I've been inhaling mold spores for the last few year. I've also developed a cough. I'm quite surprised I'm still alive.
And as one would expect, the builder has politely requested that we pound sand.
But it doesn't end there....
Our first camping trip of the summer saw the fridge in our trailer, which had worked flawlessly all last year, conk out in a very permanent way. The toilet also backed up, and I can't begin to explain how that happened, as it's basically just a hole you shit in with a tank underneath.
We also got rid of a lot of our garden, as I can't keep plants alive (which is a whole issue in and of itself), and we had a beautiful rock fountain put in. It is stunning (and just to be clear, I have no complaints about the person who put it in).
And it worked for about 3 weeks.
Again, for reasons that escape me, the pump does not pump. You plug it in and exactly nothing happens until you take it OUT of the water, at which point it sputters back to life. Put it back in the water and it goes completely dead. This is roughly the EXACT GODDAMN OPPOSITE of what a WATER PUMP is supposed to do.
And my cat just puked on the carpet. I'm not even making that up.
I quit.
Now if you've ever experienced ice, you'll know that it isn't known for it's traction. Horses, as a rule, also don't often wear ice skates. Ice, combined with skates designed to glide on ice, and the act of not actually being a horse created a trifecta of disaster which saw my sister face planting on the ice after taking about 2 to 3 loping gallops in public. She wasn't hurt, and I enjoyed the spectacle immensely. 
