Cabbage Rolls and Sisterhood

My last week has mostly been filled with debauchery and board games. My sister's westward departure certainly needed a weeks worth of proper send-off, so the days were largely defined by  gin, puns, and old movies while the nights rolled on with music, wine, and too much food. Trivial Pursuit with sister, partner and parents turned into larger discussion of evolving pop culture, as all games of Trivial Pursuit must do. There must be an unlocked bit of brain that responds during play, turning Monopoly into chaos or communism and Risk to all-out domestic war. Clue, I suspect, leads to surly substance abuse and Chess to Mad-Science level rivalry.

We ended, as we began in August when she arrived, by spending the day making enough Cabbage Rolls for our shared households to last the winter and eating pasta for supper. (To fill her with something carbacious and lasting to fortify her night long bus ride). Between her school semester and my adjusting to living with a partner, I feel like I didn't get to see her as we usually manage, and that frets me a little. I have suspected for some time that ever since I turned twenty, my life began quietly gathering speed that will only increase as I age. You recall elementary school took a decade? How summers sprawled on for ages? The month of December lasted for a year?

My Christmas this year snapped up out of nowhere, shook my hand briefly, and was gone just as it arrived. New Years was barely a hat-tip.

It's been well over a year now that at any given day, at any given moment, I will always have something else I need to do. Need  to start, need to finish, need to make an appointment for. I wonder if it will take until I retire to have days of blissful nothing, even if only temporarily. Work and school take up time, though they aren't the biggest challenges. Working in my own goals between them can be trickiest.

After she's home for a few months, my sister will be leaving again for her own trip around the world, less than a year from when I returned from mine. My friends are graduating, some of them wanting to start businesses, some of them selling paintings, some of them working, and catching up with shows on days off. It seems like so many of my acquaintance wandered into adulthood en masse, many of us surprised by it, thinking we'd already been here awhile. I find I value time more, and despite having less of it that usual, my time with my sister was very well spent, particularly if you note the bottle count and volume of dim sum consumed.

A Happy Journey to you, Hayley, and Happy Journeys to anyone currently on a road of their making.