Day 11 – Your siblings
I have three sisters.

From left to right, me, Nell (being held), Kitty, Mim.

Technically, I have one sister and two half-sisters (same father, different mother), but I think of all three of them as my sisters. I am the oldest, and I adore my sisters with a ridiculous level of adoration. (Interestingly enough, my mother is also the oldest of a family of four sisters.)

Obviously, my relationship with Mimi is different to the one with Kitty and Nell. Mim and I grew up together, have always been very good friends and have, for the most part, been in the same stage of life at the same time (she's four years younger). We have very different interests and temperaments: I'm a socially awkward, bookish, pessimistic, introverted, geeky nerd, while she is the life and soul of the party, not particularly academic, optimistic, extroverted, and into music festivals and fashion. What we share is a sense of humour, modes and manners of communication, politics (although she's less sentimental than I am), values (much as I hate the word) and some indefinable essence that comes from growing up in the same environment. In some ways, she's a much more mature person than I am, partly because I think being the younger sibling makes you less self-absorbed and self-centred. She's not better at compromising, she's just much more at ease in herself because she doesn't have the same tendency to self-reflect as I do.

My relationship with Kitty and Nell is much more like that of an aunt or an older cousin to her nieces or younger cousins. For starters, they've grown up in a different town to me, living mostly in Melbourne, while I've been in Sydney. Secondly, they're just so much younger: Kitty is seven, and Nell is two. Our relationship was always going to be more distant than that between Mimi and me, so I'm glad they've got one another.

Kitty is a bright, cheerful little girl. She reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger: she loves writing and dancing. I once gave her a diary as a present, and she very solemnly asked me what sort of things one should write in a diary. After a bit of a chat, she sat down and scribbled away. Since the age of four, she's had diabetes. It used to break my heart to see her injecting herself with insulin, but I'm really proud of how she handles it. (She's now got a pump.) We used to see a lot of one another, because I lived with Dad for six months in 2007, and I would spend ages playing with her. She liked me to put my make-up on her.

Nell I know less well, because I've lived over in the UK for almost her entire life. The last time I saw her was in the (southern) summer of 2009, when I spent a week at Dad's place in Melbourne. At that point, she was just learning to talk. She wanted to talk all the time! Because Dad was sick while I was there, and Alice (my stepmother) was working, I spent a lot of time babysitting Nell and talking to her. She didn't remember me, of course, and she probably won't remember me the next time I see her. It's one of the main things I regret about living over here: that I'll miss being a big part of Nell's life as she is growing up.

So those are my sisters. I love them all very much. (I chose my Una icon because I'm a sister in the Una model: willing to go to great lengths to protect my siblings.)


Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – Your mode of transportation
Day 14 – Where you live
Day 15 – Something you love about yourself
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – Your morning routine
Day 21 – Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations

I've got three links, too. This one 'How to get into 20 classic sci-fi shows', on i09, is pretty funny.

While I have my own opinion about LJ's latest move (ie cross-posting), these two posts, by missyjack and inlovewithnight on Dreamwidth, respectively, give an interesting bit of perspective. (katiefoolery, I thought of you when I read them.)