Big Sister

So one of the biggest parts of my life is that I am big sister. I am the oldest of three girls, and I am proud to say that I am still very close to my little sisters. We definitely drive each other crazy, but we also love each other a lot.

Like I said above, I have two younger sisters, Amanda and Maggie. Amanda and I are two years apart. Maggie is 13 years younger than me. Having Amanda being close in age to me was a blessing and a curse. We moved a lot as kids. I mean a lot so she and I were constantly the new kids. This made us very close. We were each other’s best friend because we were each other’s constant in all of our moves. We played together. We FOUGHT constantly, but we always made up. She was a manipulative little butt as a lot of little sisters are, but I fell for a lot of it because I thought I had to take care of my little sister.

I think I always took my role as the big sister seriously when it came to Amanda. There was one incident when we were little that I put myself in harms way to protect my little sis. My family remembers the golf cart “disaster” when I was seven. My grandmother had remarried after my grandfather died when I was almost 6, and her new husband had a daughter or granddaughter (I never can remember) that was around 12 or 13. This girl wanted to take Amanda and me on a golf cart ride. Amanda was not quite five so I put her in my lap so that she could ride. This girl decided to drive really fast to make it more fun. I had my arms wrapped around my little sister’s waist and was holding onto her. The golf cart made a very sharp turn while going very fast. The cart went to the left. Amanda and I went to the right. I honestly believe that I pushed Amanda away from me into the grass so that she wouldn’t get hurt. (She doesn’t.) I landed on asphalt. Amanda had a couple of scrapes and bruises. I had a lot of scrapes and bruises, pretty much from head to toe. That event pretty much sums up my relationship with Amanda. She will drive me absolutely insane, but I will take more pain so that she won’t. She is 28 now, and I still fight with her. Still, I would do anything to help her and make sure she is okay.

Then there is Maggie. Maggie was not supposed to be here. My mom and dad always wanted a third kid, but they kept putting it off for various reasons. Finally, when I was in 6th grade, they decided to try for another kid and became pregnant with my baby sis. Maggie was due in August of 1995. Mom started having problems in March. Mom was in and out of the hospital, almost miscarrying Maggie each time. Mom was on bed rest the whole time while my father had to work third shift as a Neuro ICU nurse. In laste April, Mom was put in the hospital until Maggie was born. It was a crazy time. Maggie was finally born in early June, about 2.5 months before her due date. From that moment on, Maggie was our world. Amanda and I became another set of moms for her. I was 13, and Amanda was about to be 11 when Maggie arrived. We did everything with her. Played Blue’s Clues or as she called it Coo Coos, read stories, took her to movies, everything. She was like a little mascot for my high school chorus. When Amanda was in 7th grade, she was in the talent show. Maggie kept wanting to dance with her during rehearsals so Maggie became part of the act. She was two. It was so cute.
Maggie was six when I started college. She was eight when I started dating my husband, Will. Amanda, Will, and I took her to her first concert when she was 11. She was like a little adult. She liked a lot of what her older sisters liked so she was into Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists instead of the normal kid stuff in 2006. Maggie is the tyrant that we worship.
Amanda is 28, and she is starting cool things in her life. Maggie is 18, and she is heading off to college. It is crazy to see them off on their little adventures. Believe me. I am still the big sister so I either boss them around, which Maggie laughs at, or I actually help them. We may all be adults, but I am still the big sister. I love it.

Remembering Daria

So this week College Humor put up a fake Daria trailer staring Aubrey Plaza as the titular character. (A link is at the end of this post.) Of course it is a huge deal on the internet, especially among us Generation Y’ers. (Is that right? Am I end of Gen X or beginning of Gen Y? I was born in ’82.) I loved the trailer as I own the DVD’s and watch the show about every two months, either using my discs or Hulu/Netflix.

I was a fan of the show when I was a teenager, and it was new. Lawndale High was pretty much a upper-middle class version of my high school. When Daria and Jane were complaining about the use of “dawn of the millenium”, it was pretty much my friends poking fun at the fact we were in high school at the “dawn of the millenium.” I knew a Kevin and a Britney. I knew a couple of UpChucks and Jodies. I definitely knew some Quinn’s and Sandy’s. Luckily, my sister and I were not Daria and Quinn. If I flip through my junior yearbook, which was at the height of Daria “mania” in 1999, I will see several brunette girls dressed as her for character day during Homecoming Week. Hell, Daria was MTV. If you are my age, you came home from school, watched TRL in the afternoon and watched Daria and Celebrity Death Match during the 10Spot. Hell, Daria did the musical episode before the much-loved Buffy episode. (My husband, a fan of Buffy in his high school days, was surprised by this.) Those were the days when they still showed music videos. Yeah, I went there.

What I love about this show is that the characters, while sometimes being very one-dimensional, could grow. This is definitely shown in the last two seasons and the movies, Is It Fall Yet? and Is It College Yet? All the characters grow, go through real problems teenagers have to go through, etc. My favorite story lines are Quinn’s realization that she is intelligent and that she is selling herself short, the Tom/Jane/Daria “triangle”, the Tom/Daria relationship, and Daria coming to an understanding about how her personality can be a problem but understanding that she should not get rid of the better parts of her, if that makes sense. The last official episode of season 5, in which Daria figures this out by examining a painful memory of her parents having to deal with her anti-social behavior as a little girl, really touches a nerve for me because someone close to me has experienced that and still does. They know who they are.

Parts of Daria’s personality and problems really spoke to me. I was not very popular, but people knew me. I had some friends and two best friends. I was pretty bright, although I was one of those smart kids that had potential and didn’t really use it. Although, I was very involved in Chorus and by the end of high school, SGA. I was very outspoken. I wore glasses, dealt with trying to use contacts, and the idea of people seeing me differently because I didn’t have glasses. Hell, I am 31 and still feel like that not so popular, outspoken girl that Daria was.

Even though the show went off the air in 11 years ago and sometimes can seem dated (the “new” technology, Jake working for a start-up dot-com), its themes still hold up. My 18-year-old sister could definitely relate to this show. This may be one of the few things MTV ever created, and I am glad for that.

Related articles

• Daria Movie Trailer (with Aubrey Plaza) (collegehumor.com)

So let’s see…

What am I going to talk about? Maybe I should go over the basics. The name of the blog does explain some. I am a girl. Well, I am really a woman, but girl sounds better when you are trying to come up with titles. Next, I am nerdy. As I type this, I am watching Adventure Time on my television that is next to a Tardis and Tyrion Lannister Funko Pop! figure while my PS3 controller charges so that I can play Bioshock Infinite again. Yes, I am married. I have been for over 6 years so someone loves my nerdy. Now the over 30 thing. Yep. I am over 30. As of this blog post, I have been 31 for about three and a half weeks. So that is the basics.

So why then am I writing a blog? Because I welcomed 30 with open arms. Had a lot of fun celebrating it. Lot’s of hope that year. I was leaving a job that did not agree with me and starting a new one where I thought I was going to grow. I had just gotten past some health issues that scared me. I was going to make changes for the better. When I turned 31, well, that was a different story. It’s kind of like one of those flash forwards from a show. You have the bright-eyed, hopeful, younger woman who is going to be awesome. Flash a year later, she is sitting on her couch, in pajamas at 5:00 in the afternoon, unemployed, gained weight, and not that happy with her life. Oh, wait. That is me now. You see, I am writing this blog as an exercise in working on becoming a better person. I want to explore all of the things I love while getting to know myself better and transforming myself into the person I thought I would be in my early 30’s. I hope to become the healthier, more creative, keeping up with her original podcast, happier person than I am now. I hope I can do that.

So. that’s it. That’s the blog in a nutshell. It is only an introduction. I am going to try and keep this updated as much as possible. I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I will enjoy writing it. Thanks.

Also, don’t worry. I will nerd it up plenty. I won’t be serious the whole time!

 

Zombie Nerdstorian

So I love zombie stuff. Love it. Weirdly enough, I have only been into zombies for the last 5-6 years. I have a podcast about history, and we did an episode on history of zombie culture. I have it connected here.

Zombie Nerdstorian

 

But seriously, zombies are awesome.