My sister's good mood

You know, I take back all of the mean things I've said about my sister. Yesterday afternoon, D. walked into our bedroom, unlocked my handcuffs (she caught me browsing Craigslist again), and said, "Get dressed. We're going shopping." Shopping! I could hardly believe it! D. hardly ever takes me shopping, and when she does, it's usually to the hardware store to buy more lead paint, or to Dress Barn for another pair of custom-fitted walking shoes (not that she does a lot of walking). Those trips are fun, but I'm never allowed to get anything for myself.

So you can imagine how excited I was when we piled into my nephew's new Mercedes and drove as one big happy property management company to Friendship Heights. Here's what my sister bought for me:

Cat sweatshirt from Filene's Basement: $19.99
Lunch at Panera: $7.49
Tampons: $2.54
Wallet from Steinmart: $9.99
7-Day AM/PM Pill Organizer from the Container Store: $3.99
Cash to mockingly tear into shreds in front of crazy (relatively speaking) homeless lady: $10

All that stuff, for just $47! Can you believe it?

Houdini, what what?

I think my sister knows I'm up to something seditious. She doesn't know what though. Phew!

Before she left for the day to pick flowers and stroll about town, looking handsome as she enjoys the spring weather, she put me in a straight-jacket to "make sure I don't get into any trouble while she's gone." I'm only blogging because I was able to escape!

She's incredibly paranoid. She even tells the heirs that the city owns our building, discouraging any assassination attempts. It doesn't really matter to me though, since she took all of my money.

Laundry room hours

Oh, no! The most embarrassing thing happened last night.

It was just after 10 p.m., and like clockwork, my sister was in the bathroom, depositing a rather hefty "rent check" in the "mail slot", if you know what I mean. For whatever reason, D. shits with the door open but the bathroom window closed, so the apartment smelled like a burnt onion. Gross!

Anyway, my "rent" happened to be "due" as well, but with D. hogging the crapper, I had no choice but to hurry downstairs and use the facility in the laundry room. Fortunately, I had no problem calling the elevator since it is programmed to hover at all times on the fifth floor, but even then, I thought I wasn't going to make it. With moments to spare, I squated above the disused toilet and, with the passion of a thousand Muslim zealots, relinquished something browner and more evil than Osama himself. Boy, did that feel good.

With the laundry room smelling like a bomb had gone off, I happily reached for the toilet handle, only to find that no amount of pulling, tugging or jiggling could get the bowl to flush. What the...? It was then that I realized the time: 10:15 p.m. The laundry room shuts down at 9:30, including the toilet!

I feel bad for whoever has to find my little surprise in the morning. I should stop taking those pills. Gives me the runs.

It didn't seem like a crazy idea to me...

It always astonishes me to find that people enjoy taking prescription drugs. I've been taking crazy pills for so long that I actually get high from sobriety. My sister and I eat porridge together every morning, and she just crushes them into my bowl. While we were sitting to eat the other morning, I told her that I saw a Leperchaun with gold coins behind her. She turned around excitedly, and I switched bowls!

I forgot that she had a P.R. event that evening to focus public attention away from her many pending lawsuits. A combination of a few old-fashioneds and the time-released crazy pills was enough for her to drunkenly drive her '32 Studebaker into a gray V.W. wagon in the alley adjacent to our building.

Lonely

Wow! Can you believe I've been blogging for more than a week now? Nope, neither can I.

Even though it must seem like I'm a "pro" at blogging, the truth is, I'm still a bit new to this whole Internet thing. Considering my sister owns 5 percent of Verizon, you'd think we'd have some sort of online connection in our apartment, but you'd be wrong. Mostly I steal from the unprotected networks of tenants, and given how cheap it is to live in the Manor (D. says she lets everyone stay in the building for free), I think it's a fair exchange, don't you?

Anyway, this being the "world-wide web" and all, I figured there'd be other crazy real estate heiresses out there for me to "virtually" meet - but for the most part, I'm coming up blank. Are there no support groups for people like me? I guess I'll have to start one on my own. Perhaps, "Forum for Crazy Real Estate Heiresses Whose Domineering Sisters Feed Them Anti-Psychosis Medication Despite an Alleged Devotion to Christian Science."

P.S. I put the pill under my tongue and spit it back out into the razor blade receptacle. Don't tell.

Weekend!!!!

I'm excited for the weekend, though being an heiress, I've never worked in my entire life. My sister and I are going to see the cherries bloom. (Just between you and me -- because I'd rather not get my vulnerable adult butt abused -- her cherry is way past blossoming and really quite fetid if you ask anyone who's ever given her a sponge bath.)

After that, we're going to see a play at the Kennedy Center. I prefer the New York Metropolitan Opera House, but I'm not allowed to go within 100 yards of it.

Family pressures

On the rare occasion that D. allows me to stray from the confines of No. 5-- (My sister seems to grant me leave on an unofficial quarterly basis), I wander our halls with the hope of chatting up a denizen or two, perhaps to mutually lament the banalities of Manor life: the inhospitable laundering facility; the dubiously legal ban on incinerator-bound newspaper; D.'s passive aggression toward people with disabilities; et cetera.

To the D.-fearing tenants, such conversations surely amount to little more than small-talk. But to me, they mean all the world. It pains me to say, but life can become rather lonely at the top (quite literally, as I reside on the top floor - although I inhabit the bottom bunk, so who knows?).

Anyway, a recent encounter with a Young Lady o' the Manor does stick out in my mind. After idly discussing the water "issues" that bore the occasion of our lobby run-in, she said to me, "What is it like, being the sister of the world's most powerful real-estate baroness?" Her curiousity took me by surprise; you see, real-estate barony - as well as a $3.5 million apartment complex - has run through the family veins for years. And yet, I've never taken the time to really consider the implications of possessing a surname as notoriously dignified as my own.

In short, there was no adequate reply - I simply uttered something about New York, journeyed back up to my bunk, and wept.

Family Folklore

There's a legend about our family that my sister likes to tell. It's usually told when we're in the basement, the scariest part of the building. During the 1920s, the stock market was doing very well and it seemed that capitalism was everywhere! Well, almost everywhere...

On our properties, fuedalism still ruled. We had serfs and Lords and everything! Some people even say that tenants were forced to build the Manor that my sister and I *used to* share, using the same exact methods as the Jews did when they built pyramids for their Egyptian masters.

Then one day, revolution came! It started when we tried to charge a family a $100 move-in fee, when they were only renewing their lease.

"They were learning to read and reading books about hopes and better lives," my sister always says at this part, coyly hinting towards the laundry room," and that is why the only things that the tenants are allowed to read are dusty cooking magazines."

The magical cat

I'm blogging today from the Chevy Chase public library; D. shut off Internet access for all of N.W. Washington after catching me in the apartment listings on Craiglist. D. has ties to Verizon, so she is able to do such things in a pinch.

Anyway, I had a very strange dream last night. I was on my bunk, flipping through Time magazines of yesteryear, when suddenly my sister walked in, wearing her tapered jeans and one of many hand-washed cat sweatshirts. Now, D. is known for her swift, unforeseen entrances, so it wasn't her presence that disturbed me. Rather, it was the cat on her shirt, which seemed to sparkle and glow with an eerie, intimidating light.

"D.?" I said. "Is that you?" But before she had a chance to reply, the iridescent cat sprung from D.'s shirt and bolted toward the living room, leaving behind the ill-fitting articles that once clothed my sister but were now merely a heap on the floor. I awoke in a sweat; D. later said I had been tossing and turning all night.

You know, part of me doesn't think this was a dream.

Sisterhood, part one of an infinite (I'm sure!) series

My big sister and I have always shared a bunk-bed. Even when I was married, my husband and I slept in the bottom bunk with an open spot for her above us. She wasn't there the night I forced myself onto his dying body, but she testified against me in the ward anyway. In the end, she took my share of the inheritance, but I guess she was just looking out for her baby sister and her allegedly frivolous spending.

The Pope Project

For the third time in less than a month (or as D. says, a "lifetime"), D. has threatened to remove the helipad that rests above our apartment in eager anticipation of J.P.I.I.'s arrival. I tell her that He's coming any day now. She tells me to shut up and get back in the bottom bunk.

D. is making a big mistake.

The 15th

It's the fifteenth again, or as my sister calls it, "hump day." I don't know what that means though; I just flew in from New York.