My sister is very different from me. Sure we laugh alike and we have similar features and almost identical smiles... we both are physical with our affection and love to laugh as much as we can (we hide behind humour when we are uncomfortable)... In all those ways we are alike, but we are very different in oh so many other ways.
Firstly she is about 5" taller than me. And a very smart natural blonde(don't laugh it's true honour roll without even trying!). And always dressed in excellent fashions too. Her hair is primped, her face is "done" and she has about a hundred pairs of shoes. So she is a fashionista, but a frugal one as fashionistas go. And her home looks like a magazine spread, her home decoration skills are impeccable! NOT a minimalist, certainly tasteful. She is a people-pleaser, from her own children to the most difficult employee -- she knows how to sooth and satisfy anybody. She focuses on the solutions, not the problems and her memory for proven protocol is amazing, truly amazing. These are skills I have always been quite jealous of, everyone loves my sister, she brings out the best in people. Thankfully she has a job perfectly suited to her skills and the company she works for recognizes her worth. She works long hours doing a job she finds rewarding, and the only downside to that is that she doesn't get enough time with her 2 gorgeous, young, fair children. That is my sister in a nutshell. Tall, beautiful, immediately likeable and cheery.
That having been said, she has NO PROBLEM jumping ship if things aren't going her way. She has had a history of drastic life-direction shifts. She left home at 16 to be with my mom. She didn't like that either so dropped out of highschool and lived out of her car (though later challenged the GED exams and got A+ average to get her grade 12 later). She moved to Banff for a couple months, then moved back in the middle of winter. She's been a waitress, a restaurant manager at a
few restaurants, a BC ferries casual, a first aid attendent (got her IFA first try with great grades), a bartender, a dental receptionist, a law student and a retail clothing boutique owner too.
She is a risk taker not only with career but with relationships too (musician, artist, bouncer, petty drug dealer, garbage man, inventor, retail manager...) and is not opposed to change when things aren't challenging enough. With the boutique she owned, she had big plans for it, and then she risked it all on a new, larger location. Unfortunately the overhead to stock the big new space and renovation costs did her in within 5 months of the new locations' opening. She went bankrupt, but didn't skip a beat. Even though it left our step-dad holding the tab on one of the bigger loans (he cosigned). That caused a rift in their relationship that has never been mended, and she doesn't seem phased by that gap at all strangely. Young, pretty and intellegent she moved on seamlessly to the next adventure and took the skills of business ownership (employee and customer relations and store presentation) to a new company, it gave her big business managerial skills, that she took to the next company and when she got as hight as she could go with them she moved on to her current employer and now SHINES like a new star in the sky. She is brilliant there and could not have made it this far if she hadn't failed elsewhere.
Me, I don't have the stomach for risk. Not even a bit.
Somewhere in the wild growth of her career she managed to find herself with a man that was decent with a respectable job (wholesale management), and most importantly he thought she was fabulous. He knocked her up during a whirlwind vacation in Mexico, and one shotgun wedding later she found herself being a mom and a wife in a very short time.
She has adapted well. But she is not fitting into her husband's expectations as obligingly as he would have hoped. She cooks cleans, cares for the babes AND works her 50+ hours a week at her career. His contribution is his own paycheck and the occasional emptying of the dishwasher... sounds like a great deal for him, but she's not happy. My sister felt this wasn't all that fair. She expressed her discontent, but he liked the way it was going, so why would he change? Marriage councelling didn't reveal anything great, so she decided if she was doing all the work, she might as well be on her own so she wouldn't get lectured from her husband about how she was spending her time or money.
It was a bold step, but kids or not, she felt she had more potential with her life than what she was getting. So like the loans on her boutique store, she has decided to cut her losses and move on. When the going gets tough, she gets going.
(In most areas of her life it seems to work out for the best, so I am only mildly worried). However, I
am concerned that her husband will be having a very, very hard time suddenly being a single dad half the week, every week. He may be good at his job, but he has never been good at the basic domestic skills. The man lives on coffee and cereal if nobody is cooking for him from what I've seen.... so how is he going to do things like remember to arrange safe before and afterschool care on his work days, pack lunches, sign notices, pick them up after school, make sure they get a balanced nutrition for 3 meals a day, keep the kids healthy, safe, dressed, clean, teeth brushed and in bed on time?
My sister will be fine. But she is COUNTING on her husband to pull his own weight with the kids once they set up separate houses in 2 weeks time (their marital house is sold and they both have purchase their own houses now). Oh and their babysitter has decided to give ONE weeks' notice and will leave them shorthanded the week before they move!
That is the biggest difference between me and my sister. I tend to chose a path and stay on it (with minor course corrections as need be) but my darling sibling has no problem flying by the seat of he pants at a moments notice, career, towns, living quarters, relationships are all fluid and changeable to her. Even money is something she is completely comfortable getting rid of (like the time she got hair extensions when she was just about to default on her store lease). It comes from her amazingly convenient optimism that lets her believe it will all work out.... and it seems to, even with dozens of burned bridges behind her.
She has more baggage now than ever in her life... unlike the past she can't drop every shred of her disapointing past this time, the beautiful children MUST come first, and their father MUST stay bound to her life until they are grown whether she likes it of not.
