Proud sisters

I was going to blog about the time I lent Jimmy Carter my hammer. Or, as dad points out, his hammer.

“Gee Lucy,”  I believe he said, “can I borrow your hammer?”

I was doing a Habitat for Humanity ‘blitz build’ in Hungary in 1996. It was wonderfully surreal. I only got on the team after memorising a phone number and saving some money from working in London for a year. I use the story when I want to illustrate how unlikely events in life can be. Of the ten houses we built in five days, I was on the same house as Jimmy and Rosalind. What are the chances?

However, hoping for a neat segue into my sister’s very recent HFH building efforts in Kenya proved unbloggable while she was away because I didn’t know how it was all going. Nor is it fair to make comparisons since she has returned. Why? Because now I find I am inordinately proud both of her and of our cousin, the team organiser and person who sacrificed her biythday (sic) while building houses with no straw in the African heat. I saw some photos on facebook of it all. Comfort zones were well and truly abandoned, and valuable lessons in building to Kenyan design and standards were learnt. I also noted there was no cement mixer. Result: a far more convincing and sacrificial effort than my American just-add-water approach in Vac. I see my sister is now offering to build houses in the UK. I’m sure this will wear off, but if it doesn’t, maybe I should hold her to it.

Talking of siblings, my daughter is now at the age I was when I became a sibling, as illustrated by figure (i), a rare glimpse of me on this blog, along with my little brother, taken in 1979.

Figure (i)

Now my daughter and I do share a silly sense of humour, so after going through my baby book with her yesterday and explaining that her uncle was not her cousin, we did a photo shoot. The result is in figure (ii). Note the lack of sibling. That would be explained by the fact that the sibling should not be arriving for another 19 weeks or so (see figure (iii)). Said sibling remains anonymous in all respects, and appears to be healthy and progressing well so we trust we will be thankful for what we get and find a name that suits in due course.

Figure (ii)

Figure (iii)