Extended Family

One thing that's really smart is not to rely on just one person. Namely me. 

Our families of origin are quite disimilar.  His is reliable, solid, and dependable.  Self-contained.  Mine is flakey, a bit hit-or-miss but hilarious.  And whatever the opposite of self-contained is.  Maybe like a yogurt container with the lid not quite on right that has just fallen out of the fridge from the top shelf.  That's kind of what we're like.

His family (and him) you want in an emergency, if you need to know what to do next.  Mine you want if you crave yogurt.  Or inappropriate humour.

Therefore, he married me and I married him and now we have between us an almost ideal set-up.

I'm not sure how he figured out he needed the yogurt, but I knew for shizzle that I needed the dependable and I knew further still that when your own family is lacking, the best option is to import.  My whole growing up was an import-export business disguised as Aunties and Uncles. 

Tonight, we had dinner with our closest not-family-but-who-are-we-kidding-they-are-family-now friends on my parents' side.  As we tried to figure out who had the easiest life and therefore ought to clear the table, it became clear that all of us were living with dishes-excusing-hard-things (Scott is dependable though, so he just did it anyway despite his own Good Reason Not To).  And knowing that all of us knew about each other's crap and that each of us were counting on the others' love and friendship to get through what is ahead (seeing as how we'd been with each other with the crap that has already passed), I realized that I am really glad that I learned to import (and hopefully export) and that already our little family has collected it's own people. 


Because as great as my people are, they're not enough people for all of what life brings. We need more people, and I'm so thankful for the people we've got, that they're part of The Family.