Yan.

It’s been brought to my attention that I mention my sister quite a bit on this here website. So I figured I’d introduce you to the one and only Yanelle. Here we are on the left when we were kiddies. I’m the one in the background looking scandalous with my tummy out. My partner in crime growing up and even now, when we’re together we’re either laughing, arguing, or geeking out over some random thing. She thinks I’m a moron half the time, but then I guess I can be.

The truth is, I don’t give my sister enough credit for being a vital part of what holds our family together. I might not always like it, particularly when her wrath is aimed at me, but my sister’s fierceness is one of the things that I most admire about her. This one time, she was going home on the bus after water polo practice. I stayed behind to practice with the club team. There was some drama going on with the team and I guess someone was talking crap about me in the back of the bus without realizing that Yani was there. That poor girl didn’t stand a chance. That’s the thing about us, we might not always see eye-to-eye and we definitely have different ways of expressing ourselves, but if anyone messes with either one of us, we pounce on them like damn pumas.

It’s easier to list the reasons why my sister is one of my favorite people in the world, so I will:

· She hates it when I call her by her full name.

· When closing emails, she’ll exchange the first letter of a celebrity’s name with the letter Y such as Yanakin Skywalker or Yob Saget.

·She’s more sensitive than me but rarely shows it.

· She giggles uncontrollably when we go to the movies and I do the trick where I quickly grab one kernel of popcorn with my tongue like an anteater.

· She remembers all the things that I don’t.

· She’s a hustler.

· Sometimes when she sees me and it’s been a month since I waxed my eyebrows, she’ll circle her hand in front of my face while asking “what is going on with this situation?”

· She’s the one that keeps me grounded.

· According to the Wii, she’s horribly unbalanced.

· Anytime there was an occasion for presents, she’d ask for Lee Press On nails. Every. Time.

· When I finally got my own room, she helped me drag my mattress into her room when neither one of us could sleep alone.

· She constantly asks me for book recommendations.

· She’s the fastest reader I know.

· She’s the person to call if you need things done.

· She’s the one person who doesn’t need to tell me she loves me, her actions say it all.

This is us at my wedding. You can see in the background that the world was all but ending. She was one of the main reasons why our wedding was the best day of my life and why we managed to pull it off despite a tropical storm.

Photo taken by Chris Bickford