I love my sisters

This past weekend I visited Highlands, NC, (really, "Walhalla" in SC...say it three times fast!) with two of my three sisters. The first thing you need to know is that I'm 12 years younger than my youngest sister and 17 years younger than my oldest. My middle sister is 13 years older than me. So they form a nice group with tons of shared childhood memories. However, for most of my life (you know, the part where you're very young and the whole world exists to cater to your every whim) they were these people that would show up now and again, but I didn't really know them (although they dearly love telling me what a pain I was as a baby and how much time they spent caring for me). We used to be scattered across the country, but now we're all in Atlanta. For the past couple years, we've been trying to get together once a month for lunch. Last year, this turned into, "Let's get away for a weekend together!" We went to a bed and breakfast and had fun shopping, playing games and gabbing. My oldest sister was keen to make this a repeat affair, so my youngest sister found us a great lake house owned by a friend of hers from church that we could stay at basically for free. It had a really beautiful view of the lake, surrounded by woods dotted with dogwoods just starting to bloom.

The second thing you need to know is that I'm basically an introvert. Sure, I like parties (so long as they're not "stand around and make small talk" parties...I am terrible at small talk and invariably make an idiot out of myself in some form or fashion). But parties tire me out; I need to go home and be alone and recover. The weekend was bound to tire me out. But then, I also experienced a bad blood sugar crash on Sunday. My youngest sister told me, quote, "You're not acting like any normal human being would be acting."

Finally, you need to know that I think so differently from my other sisters, that it takes a bit of brain power for me to converse with them. It's like I'm constantly running a background process to translate their conversations and questions into a form I can understand. This is not to say they are freaks; I know well that I am the freakish one. But the end result is many a furrowed brow or pregnant pause from me as I interact with them. You see, by the time I came along, my dad was so ready to have a boy. So I am basically the boy. My three sisters are, respectively, an interior decorator/chef (for lack of a better description...she can basically do anything in the kitchen or with a sewing machine), a nurse and a teacher. These are very traditional female occupations. They are all great occupations! But "traditional" nonetheless. I, on the other hand, have an undergraduate degree in Electrial Engineering and a master's in Computer Science...not as normal for a chick. Now, my sisters are all very smart ladies. But their thinking processes are drastically different from mine. I was trying to explain to my oldest sister what my husband does: He's basically a web developer, but he mainly designs interfaces (for computer applications). When I told my oldest sister this, she said, "See, we don't even know that someone has to do that!" I said, "Well, all that stuff is there...how do you think it got there? Someone had to create it! It's like the universe, it didn't just drop into existence!"

So what's the point of this stream of consciousness? I don't feel like I was very good company for the weekend. I felt tired and cranky most of the time. I felt really ill on the road from Walhalla to Highlands and back (soooooo curvy...). I had the sugar crash. I am not a morning person and was really cranky in the morning. I was impatient with my youngest sister who had never operated a home alarm system before. I was less than responsive and empathetic most of the time due to fatigue.

Bascially, I was really glad to get home to my husband, who makes me feel like a likeable person rather than the complete wench I actually am.

But I do really love my sisters. =)