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Am home. Have lots of thoughts and emotions, but more importantly a need for food. Expect long and rambling entry (as opposed to my usual short and rambly entries) later today. Or possibly tomorrow.

ETA: Ahahaha! Okay, I just spent fifteen minutes looking for the clicky=lighter-thingie for my stove. Could. Not. Find it.

It was in the fridge. *facepalm*

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I really hope EasyJet succeed in negotiating to do direct flights from Edinburgh to Brussels, because while I don't mind the ninety-minute flight or the three hours on the train, the waiting in between (four hours total!) is going to kill me dead. Feck. But I arrived at my parents safe and sound, and didn't miss any connections or forget anything on the plane or train, so that's good.

Some things I learned at the family to-do on Saturday:

• My dad is a dork.
• My dad has been a dork since childhood.
• My dad was a dork who was forever mugging when confronted with a camera. (Proof..)
• While I have a similar body build to most of the women on my dad's side of the family, I don't have any physical resemblence to any of my family members on that side.
• Neither do my brothers.
• My cousins, however? Do. A lot.
• My brothers and I are now the only ones of our generation who've never brought an SO to a family gathering.
• We will continue to be the exceptions for a long time, as none of us would really considerbringing a girlfriend to these family gatherings, for various reasons.
• A number of details about my brothers' sex life, past and present, that I really could've done without.
• Small children frighten me, especially when there's a whole gaggle of them, even when they're related to me.

And that's all I have to say about that, really, except some general thoughts on family and family history and how I wish my grandfather hadn't died before writing more than a page of his memoires, and the urge to start writing some sort of actual autobiography type thing.

When we returned home, I went out for a drink with my brothers, which turned out to be a rather enlightening experience. We talked about bullying, and for a moment it was me and my oldest brother against the youngest, in a way. We were talking about the effects bullying has on you later in life, and my brother mentioned the frequent, paranoid conviction that you're unwanted and people you're hanging with would prefer you to leave, that you're being a fiifth wheel, and I mentioned the low self-esteem thing, and how I'm often still surprised when I look in the mirror and see a good-looking young woman, and while we're all "Oh, yes, totally," my youngest brother's looking at us in total uncomprehension. Much as I adore my youngest brother, I'm sometimes almost foribly reminded that the other one and I have much more in common in terms of life experiences, and not just because we're closer in age and have thus both lived through the Eighties and remember things like Fraggle Rock

I also realised in that moment that we're grown-ups now. Well, two grownups and a growing-up, but it's strange to realise that we can do this now, we can go out and talk about serious issues (and sit in the back seat of the car with my parents in the front and talk in some detail about sex, but see above about TMI, heh) like this. I'm having a hard time putting the feeling into words, but those of you with younger siblings who're in their late teens or older will probably know what I mean.

And then on Sunday I did the whole trains, planes and automobiles buses thing in reverse order, and that was a bit of a mindfuck, too, going home after visiting my parents and realising that "going home" in this case was more than just a one-hour train ride, that "home" is in another country now, where people speak a different language and use a different currency, and it was another one of those smallish things that really drove home to me that I'm here to stay.

And in Other News That Only Belgians (and the lone Dutch person on my friendslist) Will Understand: I sat across the aisle from Kristien hemmerechts on the train! Cooool!