Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Because that's the kind of sister I am

My youngest sister has a blog--or rather, she posts sporadically on LiveJournal. She doesn't know that I know about the blog (or I don't know that she knows that I know about her blog). I found it easily enough in a search on a stage name she once created for herself. It's not even like she puts much of anything up there that she wouldn't tell me eventually. We don't talk a ton, but catch up via IM from time-to-time, something that's complicated by the combination of being in different time zones and the hours she keeps.

So I've got a little experiment going right now. I wrote to my sister to tell her that Trillian is considering a job with a new company that has headquarters in the city where she lives right now and that we eventually look at moving there--all true, although one of the things that will play a role in our final decision is how strongly they encourage us to move there vs. allowing telecommuting from the place (near Trillian's parents) that we've kind of set our hearts on. My main motivation for sending this email? To see if she makes mention of this development on her blog.

In all reality, whether or not the thought of my living near her gives her the chills, I would be concerned about maintaining proper boundaries. I am enough older than she is that our relationship walks the line between sister and parent, a situation that was muddied even more by the role I took on after our father's death. Living near her would not qualify as having family support nearby, not in the way living near Scooter's grandparents would. Not only does she not particularly like kids--she has declared she will have no children and truly strikes me as someone who will not change her mind--she also smokes (a variety of things) and has a very unpredictable schedule. And I would have to fight my instinct to take too great an interest in what she's up to, something I manage now mostly because distance makes it too difficult.

(OK, totally intended this to be a laugh-at-my-snarkiness post, but I've begun to hit a nerve on my familial relationships. I am too exhausted to go there right now, so I'll leave it for the present.)

2 comments:

Suz said...

Sometimes, I think that the reason why we have a good relationship with George's brothers is because we live about 13 hours from them. I hope that things work out on Trillian's job front...

Mad said...

Oooo, aren't you crafty? I had a run in with one of my sitters once and I'm fairly certain she discovered my blog a while back. The day of our falling out, I noticed in site meter that she was checking my blog a lot, no doubt convinced I was going to write about her.