With Bijou-bi

If you were to overhear a conversation between my sister and me you might require an interpreter to decipher it. My sister has basically created her own weird language based on thirty odd years of mixing English, French, Japanese, Aussie colloquialisms, cockney rhyming slang, weird BBD sayings, short forms, inside jokes and combinations thereof. We also rarely if ever call each other by our first names. And to explain the origins of any of the names we do have for each other (Bijou-bi, Jimmy, O-face, Mon hubu, Natoyan, Poler, OASAMVBF, to name a few) would require more time and inclination than I'm sure anyone would want to invest.

We are sisters who have to pack years worth of bonding into short bursts of two weeks of mayhem. I'm sure anyone who lives away from loved ones can relate. And much like the way ordinary words like drink, dinner or party immediately become more fun when you insert the word birthday in front of them, so too do these occurrences when I add With Bijou.

Eating ramen.

Going for lunch.


Visiting a winery.


Having a coffee.

Going to zumba. [Photo removed by author due to embarrassment issues.]