Happy Birthday Big Sister!

Friday February 3 is Brandi's birthday!

Brandi McKenna is my big sister and all my life we've done everything together.

Here we are last year selling our collaborative trumeaus
at Scott's Antique Market in Atlanta.

She is a willing photography subject and is in no way above hamming it up for the camera!
Her most natural environment is anywhere outdoors, in nature, usually with her clothes hangin' on for dear life. Here she is throwing a grasshopper into the web of a writing spider at the Farm. O, the times we've had in and around this barn. Her dog Buffy once had a litter of puppies under the wood floor where we keep the hay. It was a tiny dirty dusty crawlspace of about 12 inches and she crawled under there to eagerly retrieve each new pup and present it to me and Dad, him with video camera in hand, and excitedly report on the sex of that one and her prediction of how many more would be left to recover. She even braved all the black widows and worse yet-hopsies-that lurked below. (Hopsies a.k.a. "Cave Crickets" are the only creature on the planet neither of us would touch, "not even with a ten foot pole" because they are so repulsively grody). And I think it was while Buffy was lactating for that litter that we attempted to milk the dog in order to feed the baby field mice who's nest Dad had uncovered while bush hogging the pasture. Never a dull moment.
Whatever we do and where ever we go, we're always erupting into laughter. When she came out a few summers ago to help me paint Dad's house it was like a luxury vacation for the two of us, just like old times out there minus the constant horse riding, which is sorely missed.
One of my earlier memories with her out at the farm was when I was about 6 or 7, making her about 10 or 11 I guess we were. Dad would take us out to our farm on the weekends, where kids roamed free and unbridled of most parental ruling for two or three glorious days on end.
Provisions on this morning where not to our liking, so Brandi announced we would go shoot us a squirrel and have Dad fry him up for breakfast. Grass does not grow under her feet and she is quick to whip up a plan, with enthusiasm. So we went to the woods, armed with her .22 rifle and she shot one out of the trees above. I remember us saying a prayer for him on the forest floor once we found him, giving thanks for the life we were about to eat. We took him back to the trailer and presented him to Dad who skinned him and fried him up and we had squirrel for breakfast that morning.

Bran makes rock hard paper mache Man In The Moons,
which she has done a brisk business of selling now for several years.

An animal lover, she's always had a special love of birds. Once she trained a chicken that fell off the chicken truck to ride on the back of her bicycle, when she was three! And when I was about five she had cooked up a walk to Hardee's after a summer rain and she caught a bird on the walk there, armed with only her cunning avian talents and bare hands. When she snuck it into the fast food place under her shirt and it began to tweet, she pantomimed whistling in hopes of pulling off a ruse, but the jig was up and our order was promptly given to us to-go in spite of our plan to "dine in." I also remember her going down to the end of our driveway in the mornings, to the weeping willow and calling up a small murder of crows! She could "caw-caw!" just like them and it always impressed Dad and made him so proud. I was so envious of her crow calling ability!

When we were growing up it was a constant battle with Mom over having pets. Mom always said "When you grow up you can have as many animals in your house as you want." Bran's family now is never low on critters.

Each one of her three kids has their own bird,
I think they've got five total at the moment...

A better sister, more productive entrepreneur, creative word-maker-upper (In Brandese a menu is called "a map of the food", a crown "A king's hat", Freud's penis envy is "Fraud's penis jealousy", etc...) enthusiastic pep-talker, harder worker, faster hustler, more loyal or forgiving friend you will not find.
"Often imitated, never duplicated", the mold was broken on February 3, 1973 when Brandi Kay Pearson came into the world.
I love you sister!