Chapter Text
Jane wakes to the insistent beepling of her phone. When she’d originally chosen it, right after she’d moved to LA, it had reminded her of calm, happy watery sounds. Sometimes, though, when she stays up far too late worrying about her sisters, it was hard to wake up to anything. Maybe she should look into cheery birdsong ringtones. Jane is a big fan of birds, and one regret she had in moving to a more urban environment was the lack of variety in birdsongs when the weather was nice enough to sleep with her windows open.
Shaking her head to clear her thoughts and sweep her hair out of her eyes, Jane swung her legs off her bed. As she went about her morning rituals, she hummed a bit - then, realizing she’s gotten her phone alarm stuck in her head, smiles and finds it happy again. When she’s ready for her day, she gets out her cereal, milk, and orange juice, and sets up her laptop next to her bowl and cup. Today is her email day, as she thinks of it. She doesn’t have quite the resources to send full-fledged care packages every week, and Lizzie and Lydia are home now, anyway, so it might be a bit odd. But everybody likes getting things in the mail, and she smiles to herself, thinking of the bits of odds and ends she’d found browsing around and shopping that she’d mailed to Lydia and Lizzie yesterday
Anyway, today is email day. Jane takes a bite of her cereal, takes a drink of juice, and then opens up her email. She always emails every member of her family at least once a week, unless it’s more often - because sometimes she just had to tell Lizzie something she’d read about, or show Lydia a picture she’d found, or tell her dad about the coolest bonsai tree she’d seen at the botanical gardens, or assure her mom that she had eaten a great dinner last night.
But on email day, Jane has a set pattern. She’s noticed that she definitely tends to email Lizzie the most - which she tries to offset, but sometimes that’s the way things are. So, to avoid favoritism, she emails her family in order descending by age. Every now and then, she mixes things up and goes age order up, which she thinks makes Lydia happy, because the responses to those emails, though still mostly “omg ty u r teh best” seem to be...slightly better spelled?
Anyway, today is a normal day. She writes to her dad, telling him about the audiobook she’s listening to on her commute - something a bit out of her comfort zone, but she saw him reading it last time she was home, and thought it would be nice to talk about with him. To her mother, she gives all the news, though perhaps avoiding some of the very nice young men at work and on the metro who she’s gotten to know over the months she’s been here. She doesn’t see a future with them, and thinks it would be unkind to encourage her mother in thinking there might be some. Lizzie gets a chatty, comfy email, with a few photos and links of outfits she’s worn, a couple of books she checked out at the library on her recommendation, and, of course, a comment or two on the video blogs. She doesn’t quite have the time to watch them all, but she’s working on it, and she enjoys seeing Lizzie working so hard and accomplishing so much. Lydia she does tell about all the guys at work - partly because she knows it makes Lydia feel better about her social life, and partly to enjoy her baby sister’s energetic responses. There’s something so fun about how vigorously Lydia pursues things.
Emails done, cereal eaten, juice drunk, dishes rinsed and put in the dishwasher, Jane heads out the door. There’s something new to see and someone knew to greet, and she wouldn’t want to miss that, would she?