I'm reading a book called The Forgotten Garden and it has been making me so sad that I don't even want to read it some days. I'm about a third of the way through and it's just heartbreaking; the story is very convoluted and I'm not really interested in giving a synopsis, so read it if you're really curious. There's a little girl in the story and she's four, and she's so alone that it just makes me want to cry. I don't think any book has ever touched me this way.

I drove my sister to the airport this afternoon. She's going to Vancouver for a few days to shop for schools. It's not a long flight, and it's national so I thought she'd want to be there a half-hour or so before the flight. We left the house at 1:30 and stopped for a Slurpee and then I missed the exit on the Henday and then too the wrong exit off highway 2 and she started freaking out on me a bit. I felt bad because I was worried that she'd miss her flight and by this time it was a quarter after two and then she told me that her plane doesn't leave til 3:30. I couldn't help but laugh. I'd have to get pretty lost in order for her to miss that.

My sister and I were not close growing up. We didn't get along very well and didn't have anything in common. As we got to our late teens, we stopped bickering and fighting a lot, but we weren't great friends or anything. I think the first time I spent any large amount of time with her was when I went to Thailand with her three years ago. We had a really good time. I would have been totally lost there without her. She has an amazing talent for making her way around the world without speaking a word of the language of the country she's visiting. I'm very very proud of her.