Here is a map of the trip I've been on.  Yesterday I drove west and north to a place of pine trees and white, white snow.  Today I drove south and east to bare brown grasses and mostly deciduous trees, with a surprising number of them still bearing brown leaves that didn't have a chance to drop in our last odd fall.

A long trip.

I've seen a lot of what sisters are about this week, both the good and the not-so-good sides of it.  Today I'm seeing a sweet side.

One neice is having a birthday and her little sister is here working on her gift to her.  She has three boxes of LuckyCharms cereal in front of her, as well as a big bowl, a plastic storage bag, and a light green silk covered box with a padded lid.  Young Tilly is pouring the LuckyCharms into the big bowl and picking out all of the marshmallows.  The marshmallows become a part of a pile that is growing, in painfully gradual manner, in the food storage bag. 

It seems that last year, upon opening the gift that Tillie gave her, Big Sister sassily said, "Why didn't you get me a box of LuckyCharms marshmallows?"  Big Sister will get other gifts tonight--Jean the Retail Wonderworker was sent out to find teenwear and good smelling stuff--but from her little sister Tillie, Sister will get a round green satin box filled with moon, heart, clover, and star marshmallows.  Lucky her, indeed, to have Tillie as a sister.

Jean should be within a couple hours of her dorm right now, driven back by Eric, his new car packed to the gills with JeanStuff.

I've spent most of the three hours since they've left packing more Jean paraphernalia away so that her two cousins can move into her room for a while.  Parker's room will get a less complete sweep since he will share it with his guy cousin.  Right about now, we all wish he and Eric hadn't roughhoused a bed to bits over Thanksgiving break.  Maybe I could lodge a complaint with Santa--instead of iPods and fun, Parker should have gotten coal and the extra bed that would come in so handy now.  As for Eric?  I believe I've got a cold corner of the kitchen he can crouch in after he comes in at night.  If he wants it clean, he should plan ahead and bring a scrub brush.

Yes, it's a glorious Monday at the Simple house and looking better all the time.

How have we fared, one week into having an expanded family of eight crammed into our home and my schedule?  Let's take a look:

Positives:

Nearly everyone has a bed. Eric, living here for five weeks between school and an apartment in Madison and work and an apartment in Chicago is sleeping on the couch. So it goes;

Every meal for the week was served, nutritious and acceptably delicious;

Everyone got to school (three schools in two towns) on time, clean,  and wearing clean clothes;

The sixteen and fifteen year olds got to and from work, also on time;

The eleven year old was taken out and jeans were purchased, acceptable to her and on sale at a great price. A celebratory lunch out at the restaurant of her choice was enjoyed;

Sixteen year old cousin Mike has made his bed two mornings in a row;

Eleven year old Tillie, an animal lover, helped me to clean the dirty aquarium;

I have not yet purchased a cat despite Tillie's urgings that I need a pet. Those who are horribly allergic to cats and dogs are grateful.

The Negatives:

The teenaged trio went to a nearby store Thursday night and proved how advanced they were by drinking something alcoholic that burned Parker's throat when he drank it. The fifteen year old girl, who weighs about a hundred pounds vomited violently on the way home, wet her pants, and confessed all, but the next morning she forgot the previous night's confession and claimed to have gotten sick from a sports drink.

The three and a friend of Parker's that I trusted conspired to weave a nearly convincing story of what happened, but the story has been coming undone bit by bit. It was a long weekend confined to home (other than work);

Those experimenters are punishing me because I found out about the above and insisted that it was not not a big deal. I am no longer the "nice" aunt.  I am spoken to only when necessary;

My morning drive to the next town's high school starts at 6:40 AM;

The groceries I bought today that I HOPE will last a week (though I'll have to buy more fruits, vegetables, and milk) cost $247.48. This was mostly basic food, but included four frozen pizzas and a bag of pretzels. I will open the heating bill on Wednesday. Until then I don't think I should suffer another jolt to the checkbook.

So, in looking over the list, I'd say we are doing better than I could have expected.

Fasten your seatbelt for Week 2.

After her bender Thursday night being discovered,  I've been trying to come up with the proper word for the treatment the older girl is administering to me:

sullen
sulky
stony
silence

Which is difficult since she is forced to occasionally speak to me, the bestower of all goods and services.

I am hoping that there will be a general warm up and some thawing, but I believe things between us will never be as easy as they were before. We each got a look at the other that we'd never had before. I can't really say that I wish the look had never taken place; we are placed in too close proximity to be able to avoid having our less charming aspects remain concealed and she is growing up, which usually involves having our eyes opened to things we didn't know existed. 

I do wish that she didn't have such a paltry slate of things to choose from in her life.  She says that she likes her fast-food restaurant job because it gets her out of the house where she feels responsible for watching over her mother and keeping the household going.  She can't join clubs or pursue any interests because she has no time, she believes.  Today she is dropping a high level class to drop down to a lower level one because the better class is too much work and "takes too much time".  But she spends more than an hour and a half getting her already beautiful self presentable for the world each day, even if she is not leaving the house.

She says that she is blamed for "everything".  

In that last claim she sounds like most fifteen year old girls, but her life has not been a typical fifteen year old's life.   Because of mental and physical illnesses, and addictions, the girl's mother has not been a dependable constant, though she seems to have been around enough to have made the mistakes that ever-present mothers make. Then the woman fades into nonfunctioning and the children fend for themselves until they are uprooted to somewhere else for a while. I do wish that things were better between my niece and me because maybe there is time now to start just a little positive direction in her mind before she goes home again.  She needs a childhood and a direction for her adulthood.

But at present she is unreachable. I do not bring last week's incident up. It happened, it was addressed, it is over. I'll keep a closer watch on things from now on and on Parker in particular. 

And I don't know how long she and her sister and brother will be living with us here; maybe there will be time enough to open her eyes to a better world a bit before she moves on.