Week of January 22-28

[mrissa]

One rejection. That's it. And that just arrived today, too. What a lame month. I guess the only thing I can do about this is write more short stories. Whee. I mean, I have short stories I'd like to get out of my head, but I have novels I'd like to get out of my head, too, and I like writing novels much better.

I was in a pretty savage mood around lunch. I think I've gotten rid of it. Now I'm just gloomy. I have avoided posting about several things because it seemed like they would reinforce rather than relieve my gloomy moods. I can be stubborn about these things. It serves me in good stead.

Now there will be guacamole, and then ice cream, separated in space and time so as not to gross anybody out, particularly me.

I'm going to take a page from yhlee's book. She often will ask that people tell her something about [noun]. Tell me something about siblings, please. Yours, other people's, the ones you spawned, lack thereof, whatever. Whatever you like, to divert a gloomy Mris.

Comments

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

There is such a thing as guacamole ice cream! Well, avacado ice cream, actually. And it actually sounded good.

I'm drawing a blank on siblings, so I'm substituting ice cream.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can see an avocado ice cream being good or at least interesting. I'm not sure about the guacamole, though. I have bad experiences of garlic in ice cream. The Gilroy Garlic Fesival served it, and it tasted to me like normal vanilla soft serve that had been left in the freezer with something garlicky and unsealed.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I have 2 sisters and a brother. Once when we were young my brother decided my sister needed to name the whitehead on her nose. She named it Alice.

[genevra.livejournal.com]

My twins now like to kiss each other goodnight every night. And they wave to each other and smile when we get them up in the morning. Of course, they're currently fighting over a toy and I have to go break it up...

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

My sisters and I, whenever we're in the same place, go to a Dairy Queen or local equivalent and reminisce about how embarrassing our parents are.

We're in our late 20's and I'm now 30, and we're still doing it.

"Do you remember that time you had the really cute guy over, Elle?"

"Oh, yeah, and he was watching TV--"

"And there's Dad, sitting on the couch passing gas--"

"Oh my GOD, I was so embarrassed."

"I still think your excuse was lame."

"Yeah. I mean, 'the vacuum cleaner's broken, and it smells like something's been burning in here, and I'm really sorry'?"

"I didn't know what else to say!"

"Trust me, it didn't smell like something was burning."

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I got none. I am sibling-free.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

You lie! Tison!

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Check it out! I have four and we span thirty years! Or four half-siblings, anyway. Okay. I am thirty-one. I have a sister who is twenty-five. She has a toddler and a wife and a dog and a cat and almost a B.A. in art. Or something.

On the other side, completely unrelated, I have another sister who is twenty-two, who works for the Boston Globe. She reports on local politics, gay marriage, and obituaries. When my grandfather died she wrote such a good obit that the paper called her up to ask for a photo of him so they could run it on the center of the paper. Also on that side I have a brother who's a freshman at the same college I went to, in the same dorm. He is smarter than me, but he plays World of Warcraft so he's losing brain cells every minute.

Then! On yet another side! I have yet another brother who is almost two! He likes my flashing bike light and banging his head on things, apparently. We are all very grateful that technically he is not related to my nephew, because my nephew is older. We are not in the eighteenth century, people!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

My mom's youngest cousin is three months older than me, and her oldest cousin is two months younger than Grandma. So it's not just the 18th century.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I have no siblings, but when I was about ten, I was friends with two sisters. One was nine and one was eleven, and I knew them through separate activities and mostly hung out with them separately. I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to be one of them, and have the other as my sister.

Then one night I had them both over for a sleep-over. A minor disagreement over something quickly escalated into a knock-down, hair-pulling, punching, kicking, furniture-overturning fight between the two of them. I freaked out, but when it was over they both reassured me that it was OK, that they did this all the time and it was just a sister thing.

After that I thought maybe it was just as well I didn't have siblings.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

My brother and I physically fought over things not infrequently. I can remember one time I had his car keys (he's almost four years older than me), and I was lying on the floor covering them like a fumbled football, and he was so frustrated he was jumping up and down on top of me, and I was laughing my head off. Good times, good times.

I have absolutely no idea what that would have looked like to a single child who happened by.

[kfitzwarin.livejournal.com]

When my sister & I were little, we talked a lot and were into everything, so my parents decided that adopting an older boy was the only way to give the adopted sib a fighting chance in our family. It sorta worked, at least the fighting part.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

All the sibling sets I know personally that I can think of at the moment, when there are two siblings of the same gender, the older one is shorter than the younger. All of them. I, on the other hand, am two inches shorter than my older brother. This has always seemed unfair to me.

(It also disappointed my brother, who, having heard doctors predict that I would be 6'4", had foreseen a future of at least high school basketball glory for me. Alas, I stopped any significant growth around 8th grade, and there's not much call for 5'9" power forwards, even in high school).

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

as another data point, my younger sister is a quarter inch taller than i am. i have told her and the rest of my family that i am going to call her the short kid for the rest of my life. this has generally been accepted as my due, as the oldest.

there are just the two of us, but we've always been really pretty close. up until just over a year ago, i lived in the upstairs of a duplex with my ex, and she lived downstairs. she now lives a whole two miles away from my new house and i miss her like crazy.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

I am the oldest of four kids. My brother is the youngest and there are two sisters between us. My parents had four kids in four years, so life was interesting with all of us around.

My sisters were total girls when we were growing up. Both of them were into dolls, frilly dresses and make-up as soon as they were old enough. Both of them are tall (5'7" and 5'10"), blond and beautiful. As you know, I am not. *g* They both had more dates in high school than the head cheerleader and boys tripping over themselves to be next in line.

I was much closer to my brother, which is probably not a surprise. While our sisters played with Barbie dolls, he taught me how to throw a football. We build towns and cities with Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys, played baseball and wrestled. We played cowboys and army together. He let me play with all his toys, which were much more interesting than dolls and tea sets.

When I got married and got pregnant with my first child, he was still in high school. He would drag his friends over to where ever I was in our parent's house when I came to visit, point to my stomach and say, That's my sister. She's pregnant, with the biggest shit eating grin in the world on his face. He was so excited to be an uncle.

I wish we were still that close, but life happened, mostly to him. That is a story for another day.

[loup_noir]

I'm an only kid, but I've collected family over the years. Good friends are my brothers, sisters, worried aunts and stolid uncles. Of my blood relations, I know little and care less, but my other family, we picked each other and, despite knowing each other very well, still like each other.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I collect chosen family, too, but not usually as siblings. Much closer to cousins.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's funny because it's true!

I don't actually think tht the world is fair, but I certainly think people can make a much greater effort in that direction than they generally do.

[rosefox]

Whenever I'm attracted to someone who would be a very bad person for me to date (frex, a very nice, very gay man), I adopt that person as a sibling. I've fallen out of touch with some of my "adopted siblings", and with others I'm very close and expect to be for quite some time. I even dated one for a while--though that was unusual because she suggested siblinghood before I did, and it wasn't being used as a flirtation-prevention device--so I sometimes tell people I slept with my sister just to see their reactions. *)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I have one sister, as you know. She bit me when we were little because I was playing with the horse-on-springs, Samson, when she wanted him. I hung a gerbil off her nose a few years later. We ran cross-country and track together, though, and were in the school band, my senior year of high school, her freshman year, and I'd like to think we're friends now.

I talked to her yesterday, when I was waiting for Celia and I called home while I was waiting. She's going to Cyprus for the spring, for a study abroad program, except that she ran her passport through the laundry about a week ago. But she got that straightened out, and she's leaving on Monday. She's a great kid, and a runner, and she wants to save the world. I think that she probably can.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! I'm glad somebody's on that, because my schedule is looking a little busy, with writing books and all, but it sure needs doing.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I have a sister who is two years, five months, and three hours younger than me. We have this figured out because we were born on the same day of different months, and the same minute of different hours.

This counting characterized our entire relationship growing up. My mother had to get us the same number of Christmas presents or else C. would have a temper tantrum or sulk. When I got my ears pierced the summer before 7th grade, my sister counted how many days it was before my 12th birthday and made my mother take her to get her ears pierced when she was exactly as old as I was.

She got over that, thank goodness, because it was really annoying. She's currently 37 or 38 weeks pregnant and hoping to go into labor soon, because she's tired of being pregnant. She's been having regular contractions for a few weeks and is 3 cm dilated, so it could happen at any moment. However, she tends to have very fast labors once she gets going, and the hospital she's delivering at is an hour from her house and I'm concerned that little Paisley is going to be born in the backseat of the car.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is Paisley the actual planned name, or is it a placeholder name?

siblings, got it

[(Anonymous)]

My sister tetetetigi (LJ name) is in her second year of graduate school. She would really rather be a writer than a grad student. Does this sound at all familiar to you, MKL? Right now she is at that crisis stage, you know "Do I or Don't I". Speaking from experience, graduate school feels a bit like like driving the speed limit on 494. Everyone is zipping by you left and right. you are in the center lane of suck. I'm really proud of her for surviving this long, especially since she is not going to school for something that clearly and obviously provides employment (medicine, law, engineering, etc.) The utter rejection she has faced in graduate school will serve her well as a writer. I think her job there is done, time to move on. What do you think?

Re: siblings, got it

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

(Do I know you, anonymous stranger? Do I know your sister?)

But yes, that sounds very familiar, and it can be hard to move on from what you thought you wanted, but ultimately it can be extremely rewarding. I have an entry on leaving physics a few entries back, in case it's of interest.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

My sister is getting married! In October! Wheee!

My job is to keep my sister and my mother from driving each other crazy while they plan the wedding, because they each want a completely different kind of wedding.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Keeping the bride from killing her mom is a traditional bridesmaid duty. Might be harder for someone related to both, though -- or might be easier because of practice.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

My only sibling, my sister, was born ten years after me. If my mom had had her way, there would have been three more in between us, but instead there are just the two of us. When she was little, she was a horrible pest and tattletale and I figured we'd never really like each other much, so it's a nice thing that we're so close now.

Of course, sometimes being close consists of doing our very best to fart on each other.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

sometimes being close consists of doing our very best to fart on each other.

I don't think this is something it's easy for only children to understand. I can picture several sibling pairs I know doing this. I just can't get to the motivation in my own head. You want...to fart on each other? Because...?

[seimaisin.livejournal.com]

When I saw a missing persons flyer on campus the other day, I remembered a morning from high school - Susan's alarm went off for nearly a half hour, which wasn't terribly unusual, as she slept like the dead. But, after a while, the high-pitched whining got to me, so I started knocking on her door. She didn't answer, so I went to find the super-secret door key in my dad's room, and opened it up.

Susan wasn't in there.

Chaos ensued. I ended up at school, because at 15, I couldn't do anything productive. Dad made missing persons fliers, and had people from his office helping to distribute them. He was frantic, absolutely out of his mind. I spent the day at school sick as a dog, and mad as hell, because I knew that this was part of some hare-brained scheme of hers.

Sure enough, my 13-year-old sister came strolling into the house at around 1:00 that afternoon, while my dad was on the phone with everyone he could possibly get a hold of. Turns out she'd snuck out of the house the night before - which I knew wasn't an uncommon occurance - but had gotten into a fight with her friend Leroy (whose name was actually Robbie - he made everyone call him Leroy because that sounded tougher. Leroy thought he was a Crip, which for a 5'5" skinny blonde kid from North St. Louis County was about the funniest thing you'd ever seen, but he's a whole different story ...), so he'd stranded her at the party they went to. She hadn't been able to find anyone who drove until that morning.

She was grounded for a surprisingly short period of time. My father always was a softie when it came to punishment, a fact that irritated me to no end. What use was it being the Good One when there were no rewards, anyway?

There, a random sibling story ... :)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

My sister Barbara, who so far as I know is not on LJ, is 10 years younger then me, and didn't actually come to live with us until I was 15 or something (we adopted her over from an aunt). 15 was right when I was getting into computers and photography, all as extracurricular activities on top of school. Then I was at college, and then she was off with my parents in Zurich on sabbatical for a year, and then a few years more to finish college (living up in the cities over the summers at that point, since I got better jobs up here and since I had the Minn-StF connection by then).

So mostly I was an only child. But she is not a bad sister at all.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I have younger siblings, boy and girl. Both of them are themselves, which is to say not me. I was the practice child in one sense-- I was quiet, and got good grades in everything with barely an effort. But I had my own troubles, and they weren't the ones my parents were prepared to have in a kid. The other two aren't so Good, but they have problems my parents can handle-- breaking rules, pushing boundaries, that sort of thing. I hope we'll get along someday, because we've been in our own little worlds for so long that it's hard to get out now. I don't know how to relate to them except via gossip.
Both of them are good people. I wish sometimes they were a little more Good, though. Then I could handle them better.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I've seen lots of families where the parents were prepared for rule-breaking and got different troubles entirely. When I think of having kids, I'm trying not to be too specifically prepared for a personality type I might not get, but I'm not sure how much that ever works.

[allochthon.livejournal.com]

I'm the youngest of three daughters, and yes, I'm the tallest. =)

My eldest sister lives on the east coast, is married and has two adorable kids, and works as an office manager.

My middle sister lives home Back West and owns a bar. =)

I, of course, live in the midwest and am a Computer Geek. We went for the diversity thing...

[pameladean]

I got to be a quasi-only child, and to have siblings. I'm the oldest, and the only girl. Evan was born when I was about two. I am informed that I received him politely but asked after a few days, "When is HIS mother coming to take him away?" He was only 13 months old when Matt was born, and thereafter it was "Pammy" and "the boys." "The boys" could not have been more different in personality and they fought like demons, but they had to share a room anyway. Usually it was necessary to erect a barrier of bookshelves, or designate a line on the floor, between halves. I got my own room.

I was a really bad precedent for them to have in school, too. They were very smart -- Evan was definitely the genius of the family -- but they weren't quiet and well-behaved. (I was not a good or even a cooperative person, I was simply both shy and sly, and my disobedience was stealthy. I did not announce in class that the history assignment was so boring I had not read it. I wrote a soppy poem about Minutemen, and got an A. Evan would have scorned such a cowardly way out. Matt would already have known all about the Minutemen from his independent reading a year earlier. This got him in trouble in the eighth grade, when he aced his WWI history exam without ever reading the textbook, and the teacher wouldn't actually give him an A because he "hadn't done any work.")

When I was ten Michael was born and we all fought over him. He doesn't seem to have noticed, mercifully. At least not in a bad way. He has always got on with all of us better than any of us got on with the others.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

scottjames has talked about how his family got divided into "the boys and Laura" when he was a kid, even though he and his little sister have more in common than he does with his brother the middle child. For whatever reason, it didn't work out that way in markgritter's family: they sometimes group into "the older ones and Matt," but mostly there is a reasonable relationship for any two sibs you want to pick, and you can't really predict which two will talk to each other or anything like that.

(Well, seagrit and I do much of the talking, but that's not really the same thing.)

It might be because seagrit came third instead of at one of the ends, or it might be because their parents were of an age and temperament that didn't see why their daughter shouldn't have roughly the same interests as their sons. All of them read SF, all of them have had a geek major of some flavor (in order: math/comp sci, EE, math, and physics/EE), all of them did at least some running when they were in school, all of them did music stuff.

It might be some other thing entirely, too. Hard to say.

[seajules]

I'm the eldest of five children. Three sisters, and one brother who was stillborn. I got a sister at one and a half, another at not quite four, my brother at just past six, and the youngest was born when I was eight. She was a surprise; my other sisters and I thought we were done. I'm very glad we were proven wrong, as helping to raise her got us all somewhat out of mourning.

[(Anonymous)]

My brothers and I fought like crazy until I was in second grade, because then they could win occasionally and I didn't want to fight any more. We played a lot together and were alternately mean and nice, depending on the day. When we reached high school, we really started to become good friends and would go out to coffee together, go to movies, hang out with mutual friends, and so forth. More recently, when I get together with my family, my brothers and David go to play games and I don't get to talk with them much, which I miss somewhat, but I don't share that interest. It can also be difficult when they start talking technical, because while I am interested, I am someone who watches others in a group to make sure they are having a good time, and I inevitably notice my mother is bored out of her mind and I go cater to her. I'll have to see how things keep up in the years to come, but I always know they will be there.

Heathah

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, "Heathah will always have her brothers" is an article of faith for me as well.