After writing yesterday's post, I googled "sibling psychology," and found lots of information on adult siblings who aren't close. One article from Psychology Today said that about a third of adult siblings describe their relationships as "distant." Of those, a majority lose the intensity of their anger and resentment by their senior years and become closer. Another article described how much "mother love," or the absence of it, affects the way siblings relate to one another.

If a mother is not emotionally engaged with her children in a positive way, they, in turn, are usually not engaged with each other in a positive way. She sets the emotional tone for their adult relationships, to a large extent. Well, that explains a lot. (Benji tried to tell me one time that his problems with women were all my fault;) No wonder there are so many people in therapy!

Anyway, it made me feel better to realize that we are not the only ones who can't get along any better than we do, and to hope that our senior years will bring a mellowing, or maturity, heretofore missing amongst us. I also took a quiz on personal coping skills and scored high enough to make me feel good about that, too. I should renew my subscription to PT; it used to be one of my favorite magazines.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my weight is only .4 lb. away from the Oct. 1 goal, so I'm feeling pretty good about that, too. My weight loss graph on calorie-count.com is a bunch of W's, no, let's say M's, but the spikes are diminishing and the dips are increasing. My suspicion that Zoloft causes weight gain was confirmed by another article I read yesterday from PT, but most anti-depressants do. It didn't explain why - does it slow down the metabolism, or just make me not care that I'm getting fat? Anyway, I'm glad I have Zoloft, and that I'm getting a handle on the weight, and the depression.

Our temps were back to the 90's yesterday, but another cold front is promised for tomorrow with rain starting tonight. Autumn arrived last night while our low was only 72*. Next week the lows are supposed to be down in the 50's, highs in the 70's. Now that's more like it! The party we're going to tonight may be inside rather than on the deck and backyard as originally planned.