Uber clutch

Hi everyone.

I fell asleep on the couch last night after to talking to K about I can't remember what. And sometime between my crashing there and my waking up this morning I made it to my bed and burrowed under the clothes and books and CDs in a manner that I'm sure would impress our resident hampster.

I woke up to my brother Sven calling for the car. I found my coat and hairbrush and headed out the door. It's probably a good thing he called--it was already 9:00 and I had to be to work as soon as he was done with the car. I spent the next hour showering and making myself pretty. I was doing the dishes from last night's soiree when Sven returned with short short hair and asked if he could use my printer. The tempermental thing wouldn't work, so we headed up to his apartment to try. On the way, Sven finally told me that he had a final at 11:00 and wasn't ready for it--it was some sort of presentation. So we spent 30 frantic minutes of me putting together a handout and running to get copies while he wrote up an outline. We finished just in time and as I dropped him off for his final his one comment was "Thanks. You're uber clutch."

I don't pretend to understand my brothers and sisters most of the time. We all have similar worldviews, but they've all been distorted to some extent. I sometimes think that as the oldest I should have set some form of precendent, but that didn't really happen. We've all taken on our roles in the family and in society without directly relating to each other. Does that make sense? A lot of people would delineate their sibling roles as the oldest, the middle, the youngest, but in my family there's this bizarre sense of equality, from me to my 10-year-old sister. I'm the academic; Sven is the cool one; Lauren is the bubbly one; Seth is the performer. Maryn is still too young to have a definite role, but she's becoming this eclectic mix of everything good about the rest of us. She's smart, beautiful, funny, and currently obsessed with dogs.

I've written a lot on this blog about the roles we play and the titles we give ourselves and others. I don't mean to be cheesy or sentimental, but somehow this semester I forgot that while I was playing little sister or whatever role with my friends, I'm the big sister who can be there whenever, even if it means giving up an hour's pay. That's a role I like.