spend time with my brother

He’s back from his trip and we’ve been hanging out, just around the house, the usual. We watched Harry Potter 6 together today (on DVD) while I gave myself an at-home pedicure. We shared a tray of ice (a favourite snack).

We spend at least half an hour together every day now, just watching TV or joking as he plays his games, while I massage him. It’s pretty good and we’ve kept arguing to a minimum. It’s a pity he’s leaving for three weeks on Saturday.

That’s my line when I want alone time with the baby brother. He was surprisingly docile last night and gave me some excellent relationship advice. He’s always been very practical and sensible, a little too wise for his age.

After spending time watching TV and eating dinner with M, I spent 3 hours playing scrabble while laughing so hard my stomach hurt (something that’s not happened until this summer). He was playing some voice clips of a guy telling the rudest – and most hilarious – Mauritian jokes I’ve ever heard. I loved it. He won!

My brother and I have an unspoken routine. In the evening when he’s playing football on his playstation, I sit on the couch next to him and he puts his legs across my lap. I’ll give him a leg massage, tummy or lower back rub while talking to him and asking him to explain how a guy’s mind works. It’s very nice. It’s great to have a guy I can be completely at ease with, someone who doesn’t care that my hair is – in his words – “down on one side and up on the other and kind of a mess”, likes my “devil laugh” and appreciates my filthy sense of humour. We tell each other rather rude jokes and make up stories that leave us in fits of laughter (this started when he was a little boy and my parents would get me to tell him bedtime stories) but that I could never possibly repeat to a boyfriend.

We walked to the hairdresser’s together yesterday, and again, it was very nice to have no annoying guys making stupid comments because Brother (who is taller than me) was there.

When I left home for college, I knew that I would see my brother a lot less. He doesn’t really like e-mailing or talking on the phone so most of the year, I have no contact with him. I just hear about what he’s doing from my parents and I guess they mention me to him.

What I love is that when I do come back, he isn’t too different – I’m always scared he’ll have grown up so much that he’ll be unrecognizable – and he’s still my baby brother (he’d hate being referred to as a baby anything).

This summer, I’ll make time to watch TV with him, play games, joke with him and get in as many hours as I can to make up for all the hours we will lose when I leave home again in August.

We’re sitting in the office together, me on my laptop, him on the desktop. He’s playing World of Warcraft with his girlfriend, I’m blogging and writing. Fun times.

I went out with my brother, his girlfriend, and some of their friends (whom I actually remember from when we were kids) to a late lunch and miniature golfing, with a side helping of arcade games. I played skeeball. Whee!