![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I love my family, I really do
Everyone's doing it. After all, it is the original meme (to use the word in it's LJ/blogging-specific sense) from before there were memes, or LiveJournal.
I'm thankful for my family, whom I didn't get to be with today because the logistics just didn't work out, but I will be home with them soon for Christmas and I'm really quite happy about that. My mom is at home right now and I've been IMing her off and on all day, and my dad and my 16-year-old brother are at my grandparents' house in South Dakota, so I just talked to them briefly on the phone and online.
If you'd asked me five or ten years ago what I thought about my family, I wouldn't have been terribly impressed. (I didn't have much to say about what I was thankful for, either. I was a pretty unthankful little bastard. I've gotten better. Really.) We were close ... and by "close", I mean "close-quarters-could-not-get-away-from-family-24/7-gah!" My mom homeschooled us--or should I say, kept us out of school?--and although I have a lot of idyllic memories of swinging and talking for hours, or bringing home twenty books from the library and reading them all in two days, if I think back to the less fun stuff I gloss over there was an awful lot of me trying to pitch my brother out of my room because he was so annoying, and driving around in the hot car all day running errands, and not having cable TV or Nintendos or anything cool, and nothing to eat anywhere in the house. No, I wouldn't go back to those days for anything, but ...
In the meantime, though, I went to high school and now college and my brother went to private school and now high school. We got a few of those spiffy toys (cable TV and internet, DVD player, CD burner--the giddy height of luxury!), not to mention groceries. Most importantly, however,I remade them all in my image we all grew together. Also, everyone takes orders from me as the first-born child who also happens to know how everything should be done we started getting along remarkably well.
I'm thankful for my little brother, Danny, who didn't bother learning how to read until he was nine or ten (and thus would have appeared something of a disappointment compared with his big sister who started reading everything she could get her hands on when she was two), but hit the ground by reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
calnhobbes and dilbert_feed and has hardly looked back since. He's fabulous company. Together, we are unstoppable at the Harry Potter Wizard Challenge, as he remembers everything that makes me go "Er..." and vice versa. We're also incredibly talented adventure game players and make a mean team in Super Smash Brothers. I introduced him to many, many things. He introduced me to the joys of X-Files reruns last summer. He calls me on my cellphone for hours on end.
I'm thankful for my mom, who actually becomes more amazing and indestructible with each passing year. Someday, I think she will turn into my grandmother, who is actually immortal. (You think I'm kidding ... the word "pain" is nowhere in her vocabulary.) She bought hundreds of books for me when she was pregnant. More recently, I returned the favor by turning her into an enormous LotR fangirl who snapped up TT:EE like it was crack. I got her to watch "Mulder and Scully" (yes, apparently she is in denial about the existence of seasons eight and nine, too) with me every night, even though at first she ran away whenever anything "gross" came onscreen, and now she watches that even though I'm not there, too.
I'm thankful for my dad, who may have me beat for the quietest person in the house half the time, but we can be quiet together if we want. He took me to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on Saturdays and to Winstead's afterwards (don't ask me why there, it was a tradition we had going) and watched NOVA with me. He laughed so hysterically and unprecedentedly at the book Dave Barry Slept Here (still a classic) that we surprised him with every Dave Barry book the library had when he got back from a business trip (and oh yeah, he got us nifty little things while he was gone, too). He got me Legos (he got Legos for my brother, too, when he was old enough, but I was already a confirmed Lego-lover, believe me, and we could build with those things for hours on end).
Although of course, I have to say, you lot give me a lot my family would never give me. *leers* I mean, I figure at their current rate of coolness-acquiring they'll be prepared to hear about slash in five years or so, and of course my brother is already quite near with his Very Secret Diary obsession, but still ...
Which brings me to: cards. I do hereby solemnly swear that, if you give me your address, I will send you a holiday-type card by Epiphany (6 Jan) at the latest, and furthermore I will write in it, telling you how cool you are. :D
[Poll #211465]
I'm thankful for my family, whom I didn't get to be with today because the logistics just didn't work out, but I will be home with them soon for Christmas and I'm really quite happy about that. My mom is at home right now and I've been IMing her off and on all day, and my dad and my 16-year-old brother are at my grandparents' house in South Dakota, so I just talked to them briefly on the phone and online.
If you'd asked me five or ten years ago what I thought about my family, I wouldn't have been terribly impressed. (I didn't have much to say about what I was thankful for, either. I was a pretty unthankful little bastard. I've gotten better. Really.) We were close ... and by "close", I mean "close-quarters-could-not-get-away-from-family-24/7-gah!" My mom homeschooled us--or should I say, kept us out of school?--and although I have a lot of idyllic memories of swinging and talking for hours, or bringing home twenty books from the library and reading them all in two days, if I think back to the less fun stuff I gloss over there was an awful lot of me trying to pitch my brother out of my room because he was so annoying, and driving around in the hot car all day running errands, and not having cable TV or Nintendos or anything cool, and nothing to eat anywhere in the house. No, I wouldn't go back to those days for anything, but ...
In the meantime, though, I went to high school and now college and my brother went to private school and now high school. We got a few of those spiffy toys (cable TV and internet, DVD player, CD burner--the giddy height of luxury!), not to mention groceries. Most importantly, however,
I'm thankful for my little brother, Danny, who didn't bother learning how to read until he was nine or ten (and thus would have appeared something of a disappointment compared with his big sister who started reading everything she could get her hands on when she was two), but hit the ground by reading
calnhobbes and dilbert_feed and has hardly looked back since. He's fabulous company. Together, we are unstoppable at the Harry Potter Wizard Challenge, as he remembers everything that makes me go "Er..." and vice versa. We're also incredibly talented adventure game players and make a mean team in Super Smash Brothers. I introduced him to many, many things. He introduced me to the joys of X-Files reruns last summer. He calls me on my cellphone for hours on end.I'm thankful for my mom, who actually becomes more amazing and indestructible with each passing year. Someday, I think she will turn into my grandmother, who is actually immortal. (You think I'm kidding ... the word "pain" is nowhere in her vocabulary.) She bought hundreds of books for me when she was pregnant. More recently, I returned the favor by turning her into an enormous LotR fangirl who snapped up TT:EE like it was crack. I got her to watch "Mulder and Scully" (yes, apparently she is in denial about the existence of seasons eight and nine, too) with me every night, even though at first she ran away whenever anything "gross" came onscreen, and now she watches that even though I'm not there, too.
I'm thankful for my dad, who may have me beat for the quietest person in the house half the time, but we can be quiet together if we want. He took me to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art on Saturdays and to Winstead's afterwards (don't ask me why there, it was a tradition we had going) and watched NOVA with me. He laughed so hysterically and unprecedentedly at the book Dave Barry Slept Here (still a classic) that we surprised him with every Dave Barry book the library had when he got back from a business trip (and oh yeah, he got us nifty little things while he was gone, too). He got me Legos (he got Legos for my brother, too, when he was old enough, but I was already a confirmed Lego-lover, believe me, and we could build with those things for hours on end).
Although of course, I have to say, you lot give me a lot my family would never give me. *leers* I mean, I figure at their current rate of coolness-acquiring they'll be prepared to hear about slash in five years or so, and of course my brother is already quite near with his Very Secret Diary obsession, but still ...
Which brings me to: cards. I do hereby solemnly swear that, if you give me your address, I will send you a holiday-type card by Epiphany (6 Jan) at the latest, and furthermore I will write in it, telling you how cool you are. :D
[Poll #211465]