Ashley at Sunset
I wish my sister would move to LA.
Girls, Hills
My sister is visiting us in LA for the week, so we’re going to all the classic spots like Griffith Observatory. And the not-so-classic spots like the mall.
Anonymous asked:
How well do you get along with your sister?
Other than a brief time around 1997 when my sister was a complete and total jerk and I hated her (she was 13), my sister and I get along as well or better than any other siblings I’ve ever known. As we’ve both matured (kind of) and aged (definitely) we’ve gotten much closer.
Related note: My sister and I look a lot alike. So much so that we could easily be fraternal twins if it weren’t for that whole I-was-born-three-years-earlier thing. When my friends meet Ashley for the first time they always remark on how insane the resemblance is. But here’s the weird part: It’s very common for strangers (especially, for some reason, store clerks) to ask if we’re married. Why on earth would the first thing you guess be that two people, who are roughly the same age, and look nearly identical, are married? It makes no sense. Are there people out there seeking out and marrying their lookalikes? I can barely stand seeing myself in the mirror every day, I can’t imagine seeing two of me.
Wedding Polaroids: <3
Our friends and family took Polaroid shots of themselves and left us notes at our wedding celebration over the weekend, and now we’ve got this amazing collection of business-card-sized love.
Check out the rest of the set on Flickr for some choice sentiments, including our favorite from Brad as well as proof that both my sister and I somehow ended up marrying Russians.
From: Ashley Murray
To: Garrett Murray
Subject: Gift
I’m getting you this for Christmas. Sorry to ruin the surprise. The anticipation of your elation was killing me.
1 Attachment:
In 1992, our family cat (who my sister had been allowed to name Catwoman) gave birth to a litter of five kittens. We gave four of them away, but I was allowed to keep my favorite: A black-and-white-spotted male cat I named—quite ingeniously—Spot.
Aside from Spot’s mother Catwoman, who, after giving birth, turned into quite the little jerk, we had a sheltie collie dog named Augie and so Spot spent most of his kitten age playing with the family dog. He would climb on Augie’s back and ride her around the house, and began to pick up dog behaviors like licking faces and standing up with his front paws on your leg, begging for attention.
When we moved to New Jersey in 1997, we left our dog behind with a family friend but we took Spot along for the adventure (quick aside: We had to give Spot children’s cough syrup to keep him calm on the plane and just before we left for the airport we had to chase him around the house for 45 minutes while he foamed at the mouth trying to spit the syrup back out). When I moved out for college in 1999 I left Spot with my mother where he lived from then on.
Over the last year or so Spot had been getting thinner and weaker and, while he still meowed at you when you walked by and enjoyed being petted, he looked exhausted and worn out. Earlier this year one of my mom’s other cats, Gary, died relatively suddenly. It was an extremely rough time for my mother and when my sister and I went to her house that night, while everyone was in the kitchen, I walked over to Spot and said, “Do me a favor, buddy, and stick it out for a little while longer. Let her get over Gary first, okay?” Spot seemed to take this request to heart. A few months later my mother adopted a puppy and had finally gotten used to Gary being gone.
Last night my parents called me to let me know Spot had died. He was 17.
We grew up with Spot. He was a member of the family. We brought him across the country with us, we moved him into many different homes. While his last year wasn’t as energetic as the previous 16, he didn’t suffer and he lived a long life. I’m sad he’s gone, but it won’t really hit me until the next time I visit my parents and walk into a house that, for the first time in 17 years, Spot won’t inhabit.
