April 28, 2011

This week couldn't end fast enough between huge painting projects at home and archiving and filing and a million paper cuts at the office and a super-exciting-but-exhausting rally yesterday and a bunch of hippies getting mad at me on the Internet today. What a week!

It's also this cool kids birthday.

This is my littlest sibling and he'll be all of 19 tomorrow which means I'll be taking him out for a liquid lunch even though he doesn't know it yet.

We haven't gotten together since we saw each other at Christmas because he's busy learning how to pimp out repair airplanes and instructing youngsters and being every girls biggest crush.

I don't see my fam all that often, even though we all live in the same city we're usually too busy to all get together and they all live out in the suburbs where everyone's houses look the same except for different shades of stucco and I just don't like going out there. Living downtown has changed me too much, I think.

I remember when I idolized that neighbourhood and wanted a McHouse (we're middle class, no McMansion for us) of my very own and 3.5 kids and dog and one day I woke up at my safe Government job and realized that was what I was setting myself up for and I jumped ship as soon as possible.

Now I live in an old heritage building with my boyfriend, our neighbours are a bunch of hipsters and a crazy kayak lady and there isn't a single house on my street that's maybe forty years old. I get my groceries from a family-owned store up the street where they get samosas delivered every morning and there's a bangin' popular sushi place just around the corner.

The idea of having a lawn and a garden shocks me and the idea of having children makes my uterus do flip-flops. I don't want a house or a 9-5 that I can't move on from after I've learned all there is to know.

Sometimes I think about what I wanted for myself at his age and how much that's changed in a few years and I wonder if my brother will start to want the same things. Or maybe he'll want to live the suburban dream, too. Or maybe he'll want something totally different from what I, or they, want. I don't know.

I just know I'm excited to see him tomorrow and to get re-acquainted with the person he is, and to be introduced with the person he's becoming.