Carly

This is my little sister.

When ever I tell anyone that I have a "little sister" people always assume that I'm talking about a 3 or 4 year old little sister. Nope. She's seventeen. Seventeen... I can't even comprehend that she's a senior in high school. She's my little sister, she's not allowed to grow up. Erin calls me a "smother mother" with how over protective I am with Carly. It's not really my fault though, do you see that scar on her right knee? That's why I'm so protective of her.

When we were little, we used to take showers together after softball practice. Kind of weird, but whatever. We had gotten into a fight about something silly like siblings do, so I got into the shower and started shampooing my hair. Carly then got in and stuck her head under the shower head while I built up the mound of bubbles on my head. At some point, a drop of shampoo came out of no where like a missile and shot me in the eye. I stumbled around blindly reaching for Carly's shoulders to switch places with her and somewhere in the process she stepped on a piece of soap, slipped and slip into the wall of the shower with so much force that it broke four of the 4x4 squares of cream colored tile. I heard the commotion and thought that Carly had merely dropped a shampoo bottle, but when I had finally rid my wounded eye of the shampoo bomb, I looked down to see my little sister looking back up at me with contaminated bloody water and broken pieces of red stained tile surrounding her.

I didn't know what to do. She was looking up at me with eyes that said "What do I do? Help me?" And all I did was run out of the shower, shampoo still in my hair, curl up into the fetal position, cry and yell for my mom and dad. I just left her there, bleeding and crying on the floor of the shower. What kind of sister am I? How can I run away from anyone who needed my help, especially my sister.

My mom, dad and two uncles came running into the room. They all were in the bathroom, handling the situation far better than I ever would have. After a few seconds, my mom came out of the bathroom with her hands cupped around something that I'm pretty sure what a huge chunk of my sister knee. Everyone was so calm! In my head I was screaming at them, "RUN! Get her to the hospital! She's bleeding so much! Why isn't anyone hurrying?!" One of my uncles took me to the other shower and filled the bath tub so I could wash the shampoo out of my hair. I refused to take a shower. Some time in the middle of my second shower, my mom and dad had finally, finally, finally gotten my sister in the car and on the way to the hospital.

While waiting for my sister and parents to get back, my uncles took me to Babes Pizza in Brandon. For such a long time, I refused to eat there, it took about seven years before I could go into that building and even now, I've only been there once.

When we got back from Babes Pizza, I remember not wanting to see Carly when she got back, I was so afraid that the doctors wouldn't bandage her knee and that I would have to look at the wound that I had inflicted, so when she got home I pretended to be asleep.

She walked up to me and I peeked at her through my eyelashes and saw that the doctors had wrapped up her knee. She looked at me, smiled and said "I got you a lollipop."

Ever since the shower incident, I've always been overly overprotective. When Carly would play outside with our neighbors, yelling and screaming like little kids do, I would run to the front window and check on her. Whenever I can, I lecture her about the dangers of texting and driving (talking on the phone and driving, listening to the radio and driving, talking to your passengers and driving, driving period.) and how it's just like being drunk. "Pull over if you have to text and drive! Please, if you love me, don't text and drive."

I really do believe that other than how amazing my parents were/are at raising Carly and I to love each other, that the other reason why we don't ever fight (seriously, we NEVER EVER fight) is because of the night Carly fell in the shower.

Carly Leah Wolff is my best friend (other than Erin) on the face of this planet. I honestly don't know what I would do without her. She means everything to me, and I don't know how to convey in a blog how much I look up to her and how much I love her. I thank God everyday that her and I get along so well, and we didn't have to wait until we were grown up to actually enjoy each others company.

We go shopping and have lunch dates and go to local concerts and take pictures and have inside jokes and support and console and text each other about silly things, or sad things or crazy things, or just to say "Hi!"

Carly, I'm so proud of you. I'm proud of everything that you've overcome and gone though and the fact that you've come out a better person. You are an amazing young woman and you deserve every wonderful thing that comes your way. I'm beyond lucky to call you my best friend and even more than lucky that God blessed me with you as a sister. I love you more than you will ever know.

Christmas in July

I think it was summer, last year that Erin and I decided to go on this particular outing. We spent about an hour picking out an outfit that was not plain, but not too outrageous that it was something you looked at and thought "Now, who would wear that?"

After choosing an outfit and teasing, spraying and pinning Erin's hear within an inch of it's life, we were off to find some desolate place in Brandon where we could take pictures without people staring at us like we were crazy.

We were driving down one of the many dirt roads in Somewhere, Plant City (I'm not telling where, this place is sacred. Also, one might get shot if there were to try to venture there.) Erin says...

"Hey! Back up! I just saw a really cool, old, broken down bus!"

So I threw my car into reverse, excited about the prospect of the rusting, decrepit vehicle. My, how little it takes to excite the two of us.

I had to pull into a grass field that was a parking lot for a quaint little church and saw the bus that Erin had seen, hidden behind chain link fences and a house. A fence? Psh. There was no way a fence was going to stop us from getting to that bus.

We drove through some streets, and eventually into a neighborhood, drove through and parked in the back.

I strapped on my cameras (I had three that day) and got ready for the trek. We had to march around a massive retention pond that hadn't been mowed in a few weeks and I was scared of snakes and other creatures. Erin, always becoming what I'm not at the moment (fearless) went ahead of my like she always does when we encounter tall grass, which is a lot more often than you'd think.

We finally reached the wooden fence that we were sure blocked us from our goal of a broken down bus and attempted to climb, in true Floridian fashion, in our flip flops. Erin pulled herself up to the top of the fence before I did and audibly gasped at what was on the other side of the fence.

"Jessica, this is better than Christmas morning...Come on! Quick!"

This:

is what she saw. This picture is only about one third of the yard, so you can imagine how awesome this was for the both of us.

There was a heard of goats that would jump from rusted hood to rusted hood, clomping loudly and scaring Erin and I half to death. There was a motor home in the back, and although it too seemed very old and abandoned, we were pretty positive that it was occupied by people who were trigger happy and would probably not forgive trespassing.

At one point in our grand adventure, we walked towards the front of the yard, near a couple of yellow, forgotten construction tools. We turned a corner of a row of cars and were suddenly met by two emus. Emus? Ostriches? I'm not sure. Either way, they were big winged birds with long necks and even longer, fast looking legs.

I'm no large bird expert, clearly, I didn't even know what kind of birds they were, but I did know that emus/ostriches were NOT supposed to be friendly.

Erin and I backed away very, very, very slowly towards the back of the yard. Thank the Lord, the birds were not interested in us in the least bit. As we were walking towards the back, Erin spotted this massive bull. Massive.

This is not the brahma that we saw, this is just a brahma bull, for reference. This particular bull is 6 feet tall, and is only three years old. Going along with the "really old" theme that the occupants of the property clearly had going on for their backyard, I'm assuming that the bull that Erin and I saw was much older.

We didn't have a run in with the bull like the one with the emu/ostriches and although it would have been a great story, I'm guessing that it's for the better. These pictures look kind of crappy on here, I swear I'm better than what you're seeing.

Ode to Erin

I'm not really sure why, but God has blessed me with many, many amazing people that actually like to hang out with me. One of those people is Erin Cleveland. She tirelessly puts up with my constant desire to "photo-shoot" and despite my perpetual poking and pulling of her infallibly outrageous outfits that grandma would never approve of, and my requests for her to do ridiculously dangerous things like climb over multiple fences to tromp though a deserted car jungle where a heard of goats, an emu and a brahma bull live, she still lets me call her my best friend.

Thanks to Erin, not only do I have the best, best friend that anyone could ever ask for, I have a beautiful model that lets me take thousands of pictures of her so that I can pretend that I'm good at this stuff.

Thank you, Erin. For being my best friend when no one else was. For everything.