Was it yesterday -- or was it a lifetime???

Five years ago today, the world shifted drastically off the axis, and completely changed the landscape of the earth. Or at least that's the way things seemed on Planet Minivan.

I would say that there is about a 99.987% chance that, at some point in time, your mother told you "I HOPE YOU HAVE CHILDREN JUST LIKE YOU." Pretty much all mothers make that statement, or some version of that statement. When I was a child I was somewhat less than perfect (I know it comes as a surprise), and my mother often made statements with that general sentiment.

And then, in 1980, my sister's second daughter was born and somehow there was some weird kind of ricochet effect and my sister gave birth to an imp. (In other words, personality wise, my sister's dd2 was a heck of a lot less like her than she was like me -- I have apologized for this).

A couple of Colleen stories for the day.

When she was about 3, my sister decided to take a shower. How long does that take??? 10 minutes? Well, in that time Colleen (who had NEVER done anything like this before) managed to get a chair, push it over to the cabinet, climb on the chair, climb on the counter top, open the cabinet, reach up to the top shelf, and consume part of a bottle of medicine. This was in the early 80s and before the days of medicine being locked up (and now we can see what that started happening).

A few years later, I was staying with the girls while my sister and BIL were away on a trip. Colleen comes up to me and asks if she can make a phone call. Now Colleen could talk on the phone for quite some time. 99% of the time I'd be like "yeah sure whatever" but I remembered the name. "Isn't that your friend that just moved halfway across the country?? (This was back in the day when people did not have nationwide free calling). Course, I figured out that scam because -- well did I mention that she was a lot like me?

Remember when cell phones were becoming popular and services were offering like 1000 night and weekend minutes for free. I remember doing the math once and figured that you'd have to spend the ENTIRE time of your nights and weekends on the phone to use all the free minutes (which is, of course, why companies are now offering free nights and weekends -- I wasn't the only one doing the math). Someone once asked how it would be possible for anyone to spend that much time on the phone. Must have been someone that never met Colleen. (Did I mention that she was a lot like me?)

Then five years ago she was crossing the street, late at night, and it was dark, and a car did not see her, and a bright light was taken from the world. And it's really not fair when young, healthy people are taken from us.

And we miss her.

A month before she died, Spouse and I filed an application to adopt a child from China. And now Princess is with us. A few days ago I found some empty chocolate wrappers on the ground. I was slightly concerned we have a dog so I called the emergency vet and found that the amount of chocolate would *not* be toxic to an 85 pound dog. Princess insisted that she did *NOT* eat the chocolate.

Next morning Spouse found out what had happened to the chocolate. We had a 15 quart plastic shoebox type container that was about 1/2 filled with styrofoam peanuts. Princess decided that she was going to "make" a concoction of water, packing peanuts, and chocolate. Luckily this was discovered before Princess woke up -- because I have a difficult time talking to children about consequences when I'm laughing my arse off.

Spouse asked "what child would come up with this."

Ah yes, mother knows best and, sooner or later that curse had to come back to bite me on my butt.

(And I just *KNOW* that Colleen wants to make sure that we never forget the likes of her -- so I think somehow she gives Princess these ideas -- just to drive me crazy). (Did I mention she was a lot like me??)