My little sister is an actual artist with formal training and everything. To her, life is art: all the world’s a canvas, and everything in it is art supplies. She wastes nothing. She has even been known to create art with menstrual blood and dead people’s ashes.
She’s an actual witch too. She’s a wicca witch, not a wicked witch, but she can be a little spooky at times.
She’s pregnant with her fourth child now. She homebirths them with midwives, so sometimes I get to watch. Nobody got to watch the last one though, because she was only in labour for 20 minutes. Just time enough for a twinge, a phone call, three contractions and a delivery. By the time we all got there (me, my mom, her other kids, her friends, the midwives, the neighbours, her ex, the ambulance attendants, etc.), she was sitting in bed holding a newborn baby who was still attached by the umbilical cord.
Speaking of umbilical cords, she kept the placentas of her children in ice cream containers in her freezer for years. She was going to “do” something with them, but you know how it is. One year rolls into the next, you keep finding yourself pregnant, and the next thing you know you’ve got a freezer full of placentas. Anyway, she finally got rid of them when her 13-year-old had a friend over who tried to help himself to some strawberry ice cream.
“Don’t eat that,” her son said, “It’s my placenta.”
Speaking of freezers, she kept a guinea pig in her freezer along with the placenta collection. Her five-year-old got to bring home the class pet for the weekend, and – well, it’s kind of tragic really – the guinea pig had a very short weekend. She had decided it should go to her ex-husband’s house for its own safety, so she left the cage on the dining room table while she made room in the car for it. When she came back in, she saw the carnage, freaked out, retrieved what was left of the guinea pig from the huskies, put it in the freezer, and formulated a plan. The plan involved a carefully crafted lie, a nearly identical guinea pig for the kindergarten class, and some sort of spiritual ceremony for the guinea pig in the springtime.
But you know how it is, life just kind of takes over and next thing you know it’s winter again and you still have a dead guinea pig in your freezer.
There’s lots more I could tell you about my little sister, but someday she might stumble across my blog so I’d better not. It’s bad luck to piss a witch off.
You have caught the essence of her beautifully.
I would not call her weird; I would use the word interesting! And you are just as interesting
Your sister sounds like a fabulous person who’s hard to keep up with! She’s not so strange though. At least to me, because I’m also Wiccan, but for the record I’d give birth in a hospital if I were in that situation. Just my personal preference!
I totally understand about the guinea pig. Well played on her part.
Thanks Deb – I’m doing you next! (Just kidding.)
Dakota, I use the word weird with the utmost affection. 😉
Lissa, welcome to my blog. You’d probably like her – she’s both fabulous AND strange. She can concoct a natural remedy for every obscure ailment that might befall a person, she makes her own Christmas trees, and she needle-felts little replicas of all her children and animals. Plus she’s very articulate and persistent, so she has never lost an argument in her whole entire life.
interesting. i would be more careful sussing out food in her home freezer
That’s a madcap wonderfulness.
Hee hee. I have a placenta in my freezer, too! :O
The next time we have a baby, I’m going to ask my midwives to help dh do a stamp of it. I have seem some people do this and use them as family trees–it really appeals to me.
The frozen one will be planted beneath a tree sometime–and, for the record, it’s *well* labelled. 😉
Jesus, maybe everybody has a placenta in their freezer except me and maybe my sister’s NOT weirder than me. (That’s a sobering thought…)
My evil eye started roaming at the wedding entry mentioning my placentas and the guinea pig.
For the record we did not find a matching guinea pig…we returned a VERY PREGNANT guinea pig to the class. Everyone in town knows the sordid truth except Arrow. I expect someday the truth will slip out, just like truth about my rabbit Snow White did. Luckily no one actually ate the guniea pig.
Hey Kerry, welcome to my blog! I knew you’d show up eventually so I didn’t tell them about the weirdest stuff. 😉
Did you look for an identical guinea pig and couldn’t find one? Did you know the replacement pig was pregnant? What does Arrow think happened to the orginal pig?
On the friday we told her Squeak didn’t look like she was feeling well and thats why she couldn’t go to her dad’s with her. Then we spent the weekend getting up the courage to tell the principal (family friend) and she broke the news to her teacher. We all agreed that the best thing to do was tell the kids that Squeak was sick and died peacefully on the weekend. Arrow and I would go get a new guinea pig on monday morning. We were given strict instructions to get a baby guinea pig but three stores later we still hadn’t found one so we took the friendliest one we’d met – the knocked up Squeak Two. She had her babies (two) a couple of weeks later.