Sister Book Club

One of the hardest things about my life right now is being so far away from my sister. I miss my parents too, but being apart from parents is a natural part of growing up. My sister and I have always been extraordinarily close-we grew up in the middle of nowhere with two working parents, so for large chunks of our childhood we had only each other as amusement. We were further away than normal when I went to college, but only for two years, as she followed me there, thanks to our Alma Mater's habit of giving away money like it was candy. We were only truly separated when i moved down here for grad school. I find myself wishing frequently that we were close enough to easily visit for a weekend. I miss cooking with her and making fun of her inferior abilities , going to museums and movies with her, wandering aimlessly around target with her, going hiking, sitting around and talking. She's as shy and awkward as I am, goofy and quirky, and has the biggest heart I've ever known. She's my hero and my best friend, and I hate being so far away.
One way we get quality time even from a distance has been to have a book club. We found a syllabus for an MIT class on novels about dysfunctional families, and now we read the books together and discuss. It lets us flex the literary parts of our brains we abandoned for science/sociology. So far we've read Frankenstein, which we liked a lot even though our discussion was heavy on the women's studies interpretation (The monster is Mary shelley and Frankenstein is her horrible husband Percy! The monster is Mary Shelley's feelings about her miscarried pregnancies!). We read Howard's End, which I liked and she didn't, and To The Lighthouse, which she liked and I, um, failed to finish. We read As I lay Dying, which we both adored. And now we're finishing up Go Tell It On The Mountain, which is a great book but hard to discuss in depth. The last book on the list is the God of Small Things, which I have read before but she hasn't. We're making our own list next, possibly focusing on the Devil and God. I can't wait. Even when I don't finish my reading and have to postpone it (frequently...in my defense, my job is much more time consuming than hers), book club night is one of the highlights of my week.
I would put up a picture of us to close out this thoroughly sappy post, but we are incapable of taking a picture where we both look fully human. I have a round face and she has a thin one, and if I look good she looks like skeletor, whereas if she looks good I look like a pumpkin. It's a problem.