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SISTERS BIANCA AND Sierra Casady, better known (maybe) as freak folk duo CocoRosie, offer up an otherworldly mix of vocals, strings, and sounds from children’s toys in their often haunting, undeniably original songs. The duo sometimes performs with longtime TSP fave, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, but for many years, the girls didn’t see much of one another at all.

Then younger sister Bianca turned up for an unannounced visit to Paris-based Sierra. When Bianca’s stay turned into an extended recording session–in the tiny bathroom of Sierra’s Montmartre flat–the sisters’ first disc, La maison de mon reve was born. For a introduction to Cocorosie’s ethereal sound, check out their tracks “Terrible Angels” and “By Your Side”, and watch for their new CD, Grey Oceans, dropping this week.

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BROOKLYN-BASED, TEXAS-twanged sextet The Sweetback Sisters describe their music as “Honky-Tonk for the modern day cowboy and girl”, and really, who are we to argue? Watch for this fabulous band of harmonizing (non) sisters on tour. And meanwhile, sing along to one of my favorites of their tunes, “Don’t Put Her Down.” Let that one be your motto, sisters.

Bedtime's not quite this peaceful...but it's close

F OR THE LAST few years, my family’s bedtime routine has been one of divide and conquer. The H would take bathtime, I’d deal with pajamas and teeth. One of us would read to the Rock, who generally demanded at least three books, one of which had to contain Clifford, while the River, for the longest time, was really engaged by Laura and the Little House, which I alone would read. But this spring, something had to give, and I feared reprisals.

The H, bless him, has been traveling almost the whole year. He’s working on a wonderful project, but it has kept him not just out of town, but mostly out of the country, for the better part of the last four months. The thing I dreaded most, as I anticipated week up on week of solo parenting: bedtime. (Ok, the morning race to get out the door to school isn’t so fun either. But at least I’m rested when it begins.)

I found ways to make the nightly wind-down easier: both children no longer get bathed nearly every night; we alternate. And often skip it altogether. The River listens to a book on tape while I lie down with his sister for the last snuggles she needs in order to settle in to sleep.

But when it comes to bedtime stories, my kids are unified. They each want a choice, and they want to be read to together. That’s not so amazing, really, but I’ve been stunned by the level of mutual respect each shows the other when it comes to what they choose for their read-to-me material.

The Rock is tending towards fairies, dancers, and animals who love their mommas. (Who can argue?) Not only does the River listen intently, he sometimes takes over the reading if have lingering kitchen clean up to do. And he, though he can now read chapter books on his own just fine, prefers to read non-fiction to himself (he’s big on the history of World War II) and have the fantasy stuff read aloud. We’re deep into The Lightning Thief, the story of half-human, half-god, all 12 year old boy Perseus Jackson. (Unlike the movie version, the book is quite good.)

The Rock, who used to twist and turn and interrupt and sing and generally make everyone but herself highly agitated during the reading of the dreaded Books Without Pictures (oh, the injustice!) now snuggles up between me and her brother, listens intently, and asks questions that show she’s not just following along, but actually captivated.

Will this peaceable kingdom last? I have no idea. But when the H finally returns, he can take back bath duty. I’m keeping reading.

APRIL DOES SOMETIMES feel like the cruelest month, because for me, every year, this is when I revamp my diet and exercise routines. Something about warm air and sunshine makes me tune back in to my too-often-neglected body and my health, and as a result, I’ve been scouting around the net for blogs and websites that help me clean up and pare down my eating. Here’s a baker’s dozen of sites that are my current faves for inspiring me to cook and eat in a way that is healthy for me, and the planet.

Some of these you’ll recognize from prior favorite food blog lists, but others are new to me, and TSP.

Cheap Healthy Good

The name says it all. And besides staying true to its mission, the site offers great roundups of recipes from elsewhere on the net, tailored toward a particular goal. I like this list of “healthy one-dish meals with good leftover potential.” And not just because it features lots of gratuitous pictures of George Clooney.

Albion Cooks

Catherine describes her cooking as “Vegetarian, delicious, healthy” but it’s also beautifully photographed and geared towards cooking with what’s in season. I’m dying to try  her brussels sprout and blue cheese pizza, which combines two of my favorite things in the world.

Dr. Gourmet

This is, hands down, the best dieting website I’ve found. Created by New Orleans physician Timothy S. Harlan M.D., it has medically sound information and advice, and every single recipe tells you if it’s suitable for various nutritional needs (low sodium, gluten-free, etc.) Best of all, unlike so many other diet sites, Dr. Gourmet’s recipes focus on using unprocessed, real foods. The chicken vindaloo is calling my name.

Mighty Foods

This site’s mission is to “redefine the way you think about whole, natural foods” and with inventive recipes like Midnight Hummus (made with lentils) and Brown Rice Syrup Brownies, I think it’s got a good shot. I also love that like Cheap Healthy Good, it offers up well organized lists of other recipe sources around the web. Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks (more on her later) is one of the contributors, so you know you’re in good hands.

The Ethicurean

This one’s not a cooking site, per se. But if you care about what you eat, where it comes from, and its impact on the planet, this site is for you. It gives a great round-up of food, farm and environmental news in one pithy package. Good to read while you’re eating your (healthy!) lunch.

Mark Bittman’s Bitten

Mark Bittman seems to divide foodies straight down the line: some love him while others scoff. I’m a lover, so I was distraught when, just this week, The New York Times decided to fold Bittman’s Bitten blog into what they describe as the new “superblog” Diner’s Journal. My jury’s out on that decision, but all of Bittman’s posts are available here. His chickpea snack has my name all over it.

Grist

If you don’t know this smart, slightly irreverent environmental news site, you should, and not just because their food content is excellent. Great writing from strong voices make this entertaining as well as a useful resource. Recipes are featured occasionally, but this one is all about educated eating.

Fat of the Land

Langdon Cook (with whom, as it happens, I went to high school–go figure) is an author, and, perhaps more important, a forager…meaning: he finds his food. OK, not all of it, but if you want to read about hunting and cooking chanterelles, fishing for salmon, or digging razor clams, he’s your guy. And his recipes (and writing) rock. Since I pine for Mexican food here in my tiny nearly-New England town, his recipe for fish tacos may be a lifesaver.

Eating From the Ground Up

I met Alana IRL (you know: In Real Life) because the Rock (that’s my daughter) befriended her little girl, Rosie. They quickly became peas in a princess-y pod, and Alana and I were thrown together as only two mamas on a playdate can be. But it turned out that I love Alana as much (dare I say more?) than Rock loves Rosie. She’s a superior cook, an adventurer, hilarious, kind, and so dedicated to locavore eating that she kind of takes my breath away. She’s responsible for my discovering the wonders of homemade granola, but her blog is a treasure trove of healthy, family-friendly recipes. I can vouch for her nearly-no-sugar birthday cake: awesome. But don’t take my word; bake it yourself.

101 Cookbooks

If you’ve followed my previous food-blog picks, you already know how much I love Heidi Swanson and her gorgeous site, 101 Cookbooks. She’s the queen of taking healthy whole foods and turning them into inventive, delicious fare that appeals to a wide range of eaters. As winter winds down, and I await the real spring veggies, I think I’m going to try this Warm Red Cabbage salad for a super healthy and satisfying farewell to cold-weather foods.

Gluten Free Girl and the Chef

My love for Shauna Ahern and her delicious blog is not new news. My ardor for her kale chips, heaven on a plate for a chip-deprived dieters, might be. Check ‘em out, and be sure to read our profile of sister Shauna, too.

Gluten Free Goddess

I found Karina Allrich, aka the Gluten Free Goddess, thanks to Twitter, and I love her writing, her photography, and most of all, her recipes. Karina is gluten-, egg- and dairy-free, so great for people challenged by those allergies. I just like how her food tastes; this mayo-free coleslaw just may become my summer BBQ staple…

Post Punk Kitchen

I was never really punk, so I don’t think I qualify as post-punk either. But no matter: the rebellious vegans of PPK welcome all cooks willing to forgo animal products. Veggie friends of mine swear by their cookbooks, and I’m pretty sure their mango-ginger tofu would convert anyone to the joys of the humble soybean.

Enjoy, and share your favorite online resources for healthy eating.

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Enjoy, and tell us what’s on your iPod for spring.

YOU PROBABLY KNOW by now that here at The Sister Project, we can’t resist a good sister story, and we love the sisters known as nuns, but this particular piece of news took us by surprise. Bill Murray is one of our favorite actors and comedians (if you haven’t seen his hilarious turn as himself in last year’s Zombieland, rent it. Now.) but we didn’t know that one of his eight siblings is a Catholic nun.

Sister Nancy Murray has been a member of the Adrian Dominican Sisters since 1966. But she also shares Bill’s dramatic tendencies: since last year, she’s been touring the country in her one-woman performance about the life of a 14th century nun, St. Catherine of Siena. Catch the show, tell us your review, and let us know if you spot Bill. Apparently he’s quite a fan of his older sister.

THIS TIME LAST year, the “25 Things” meme was ricocheting around the net, and we Sister Project sisters decided to have a go at our own lists. I decided to take a second look at mine, to see if it’s true that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Read on to learn at least 25 things, possibly a few more, about me.

1. I tend to feel overwhelmed by my life a lot of the time.

Yep, still true.

2. I know that it’s ridiculous for me to be overwhelmed by my life, which is fun, and cushy, and healthy and full of love. But I am.

Trying to go easy on myself about this. What’s the point of making myself feel worse about feeling badly? I can’t see one.

3. I love old dishes, silverware and crystal. This used to get me into trouble on eBay.

True, but I seem to have broken the addiction.

4. I recently started spinning (bike, not wool) and I’m a little obsessed with it. We’ll see if it lasts.

Oooh, the shame. At least I’ve replaced spinning with dancing.

5. When I was 7 years old, I wore bifocals.

6. I once had sex in a tree. (Sorry, Mom.)

7. I took Mandarin Chinese for a while in high school, and I loved drawing the characters.

8. When I was a little girl, I had penpals around the world: England, Japan, France, Vermont…

9. My first pet was a black and white rabbit named Scrambley. When she died, a mean kid in my eighth grade class made a crack about “the rabbit dying” (you know, the old school pregnancy test) and I neither understood it nor found it funny.

10. One of my gross habits that I don’t want anyone to know about is that I love to pick at my toenails.

11. I met my husband at an Ethiopian restaurant. He was with his girlfriend.

12. I have several first cousins I have never met.

13. I have lived in four countries and thirteen cities.

14. When I was 3, I loved a statue in the Cincinnati Museum of Art called “Eve Disconsolate.” I always thought that would be a good name for a band.

15. My favorite slow-dance song in high school was Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones.

16. My favorite Rolling Stones cover is Beast of Burden by Bette Midler.

All still hold true. Can’t erase your own history.

17. I often have insomnia. I’m writing this at 2:20 a.m.

I have more or less beaten the insomnia bug. I thank my anti-depressants.

18. I am infinitely better at starting things than at finishing them.

Alas. Yes.

19. Some of my favorite works of fiction are all of Robertson Davies’ books, but I cannot remember the plot of any of them.

I tried to start rereading them this year, and haven’t had much luck. Some books, perhaps, appeal due to time and place. But I’m going to give Davies one more try; my memories of the first time through are that good.

20. The best experience I’ve ever had in a museum was a Rothko retrospective at the Whitney about 10 years ago.

21. My favorite flowers are bachelors buttons and pansies.

22. I always think I might see a plane fall out of the sky, or drive off the edge of a bridge. Maybe that’s why I don’t travel much.

23. One of my earliest memories is walking in the woods with my mother. I must have been 3.

24. One of my biggest regrets is that my father never got to know my kids, and vice versa.

25. I have always loved poetry, and write a lot of it in my head.

And again, all of these hold true. Maybe it’s like what I wrote a few weeks ago about growing older: The tune may change, but the song remains the same. And you? Have you done your list of 25 things? Point us to it, or leave it in the comments…

ON THE POSITIVE side: No one threw up. But what happens when you pack two not-so-copacetic siblings into the car for a four-hour ride? In our family: headphones, iPods, and a whole lot of discussion of just what makes boys so gross, anyway.

The Rock, of late, has taken to saying she wants to be a “traveler” when she grows up. Fair enough, except she was born into our family. To say we don’t travel much is like saying cats dislike water. Of course, it’s not that simple, right? Cats (at least our cat) are equally repelled and fascinated by water flowing from the faucet or cascading down in the shower. It seems so… shiny, but YIKES! Don’t go too near.

That’s pretty much our family’s relationship to the family vacation. Oooh. That place looks pretty. And relaxing…but oh no! The logistics! The expense! The…change of scene. It’s all so…scary. All those latter parts, are to be avoided, and as result, we haven’t taken a family vacation, other than long weekend visits to friends, in three years.

But this spring break, we’re headed off to Europe (first time in nine years for me), and so to get our feet wet, so to speak, we decided to spend this past long weekend on a trial run. We decided to take a road trip, all the way to Montréal.

This meant four hours trapped together in my car, which looks and smells like it’s dressed itself up to audition for Sanford and Son. In my defense, hey, I drive children around all damn day. They eat, mostly in my car, and treat the entire interior like one big recycling bin/sink/Kleenex.

Lord knows I’ve tried to get them to change their evil ways. Suggestions welcome, but they generally don’t seem to mind riding in the inside of a garbage can. Also in my defense, I tried to get it detailed before we left, but I couldn’t get an appointment, so I settled for the drive through wash and a quick trash-picking in the back seat. The smell abated enough for us to tolerate four hours, especially since that’s long enough so that the kids are allowed to watch movies on our iPods, short enough that the batteries will last the whole way. Two kids, two sets of headphones, two screens should add up to one quiet (if slightly grimy) ride. But, you see, one of those kids is a sister. And the other, as you know, is not.

Boys, the Rock discovered, in explicit and articulate fashion this trip, well–they’re gross. Only she says it more like this: GROOOOOOSSSSSSS. As in, “‘River!’ You ah so GROOOOOSSSSSSS.” (At 4, she tends to drop her r’s as though she’s grown up in Hahvahd Yahd. Non-New Yorkers sometimes say she sounds like she has a New York accent, but I can’t believe that’s true, so I chalk it all up to youth.)

The truth is, according to her, that boys are gross when they eat in the car. (No mention of her own unmentionable manners.) They are gross when they fart. They are gross when they pick their noses. (No one is arguing with her.) Did I mention they are GROOOOOSSSSSS when they eat in the car? And that the car, as a result, is DISGUSTING!!

“Mama! I cannot sit back here. IT’S GROOOOOSSSSSSS.”

Luckily, Montreal is a city, so you don’t really have to get back in your you-know-what car, not for four whole blissful days. But when you do finally load up for the return journey…

“Mama! This cah seat is GROOOOOSSSSSSS.”

Right. Four hours home.

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Not since we all decided to make our lists of 25 things have I struggled so much to define myself. I listen to all kinds of music, save, perhaps, polka, and have for most of my adult life. Even so, the first track was an easy pick.

In high school, my taste, though somewhat diverse, always came back around to the early 70s flower-child music that was the default soundtrack at every American boarding school in the 1980s. Though I was never a Deadhead, I did buy Grateful Dead records (how hopelessly uncool; bootlegs were the ONLY way to go) in the hope of gaining sufficient knowledge to impress a sophisticated Manhattan boy, who was the first of many unrequited high school crushes. (By the time we went to college, he had become a good friend, and he once made me the best carrot cake I’d ever eaten. So all was not for naught.)

Luckily, my mooning infatuation didn’t maintain control over my musical taste. No, at 14, the key influences on my record choices (remember records?) were my sisters, my sweet friends, the dorm girls who helped with English papers and listened to my loopy recitations about crushes 1-100 of those heady, hormonal years. The soundtrack? Joni. Always Joni, and I have the high school yearbook page to prove it. I could drink a case of those sister friends, and over the years, I have.

My tastes broadened a bit in college. The Dead were still the high water mark of preppy cool, and I even went to a few shows. But I liked to dance, and whatever unkind thing you want to say about late 80s music (oh, and there are a lot of them!) there was some pretty fabulous dance pop being recorded then. Madonna was at the height of her popularity. INXS, fronted by the late, lamented Michael Hutchence, was definitely able to mystify.

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After college, I moved to New York, and then Washington, DC, and then finally to Los Angeles. The constant in those years was one of my dearest sister-friends, Leslie. (You’ve read about her and her famous sweet potato pie before.) To say that our musical taste differs is to put it mildly. Kiss? Not so much my thing (much to my son’s dismay) while Leslie has not just all their music, but T-shirts and action figures. (Go figure.)

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I could go on, and on, and in future posts, I expect I will. But meantime, tell me: what’s the soundtrack to your sisterhood?

WHILE THAT PATRICIAN gentleman above may not look like Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears, he was way ahead of his time when it came to advice for moms and dads. He’s Henry James, the august novelist, and if I had only had the sense to follow his rules, I wouldn’t have ended yesterday evening by yelling at my daughter…to stop yelling.

My son, who was caught in the middle of my battle with the Rock, gently suggested this morning that if I had been kind and quiet when talking to his sister, I might have averted the scene that kept us all up past bedtime. Unbeknownst to him, he was paraphrasing Henry James’s rules to live by:

“Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.”

Thanks, Henry. Sorry, Rock and River. And Marion, maybe you need to add this to your list of the rules for sisters? Oh, wait–it’s already there, wrapped up and tied with a bow, in the all-important number 15.