Stupid Purple Dinosaur

Mine may drive me absolutely insane sometimes, and we may not always get along or see eye to eye on...well, anything, but family is awesome.  It reminds me of a song I used to sing when I would babysit those precious children who loved that horrid purple dinosaur:

"A family is people,
A family is love.
That's a family.
They come in all different sizes
And different kinds,
But mine's just right for me, yeah!
Mine's just right for me."

My family is perfectly imperfect.  My "nuclear" family is sometimes volatile (like today when we all just took a page from Alexander's book and had terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days) but, man...they sure are precious when they're sleeping.  I know some people will totally relate to that.  Or most of you.  Even if you don't want to admit it.  I won't judge.

My "nuclear" family when I was growing up was also imperfect.  My dad traveled a lot and my mom got to deal with the brunt of our anger, hostility and hatred.  Three females?  And a female cat and dog?  If I had been my dad, I would've been gone all the time, too!  It wasn't his fault, but it was his job.  When he'd come home from a week of traveling, he'd want to chill and relax, and we'd be raring to go.  I can't imagine how difficult it was on him, but he took it all in stride. 

My extended family is rather large, however, most of us don't keep in touch.  There was a "core" group of grandkids on my mom's side: My sister and me and then my mom's sister's daughters...there were (eventually) 4 of them.  We grew up in the same neighborhood and lived around the corner (or a few of them) from each other.  Four of us are stairstep cousins: I have a cousin a year-ish older and a year-ish younger, who's a year-ish older than my sister.  They have two sisters who complete our stairsteps, too.  We have very few male cousins, so they get to put up with a lot from us.  Or at least they used to...like I said, we don't get to keep in touch nearly as often as I'd like.

The great thing about being a grown-up (there's just one?  Womp womp!) is that two of the cousins in our staircase live less than 5 minutes from me, and one of them came to my house tonight to pick up a book for her book club AND some potato soup, too!  She's my "Pal," which requires an explanation:  Right before I turned 7, we moved from our home in San Antonio to Norman, Oklahoma.  When we'd come back to SA to visit (which was quite a bit because I had an ill grandparent), we'd inevitably spend at least one night with them.  Each time we'd leave, our stairstep cousins (L & Z) would run down the sidewalk in their cul-de-sac, waving their arms and jumping while yelling, "YOU'RE STILL MY PAL!!!!!"  It was tradition...a tradition that we still do in some way/shape/form on a regular basis.

My Pal and I had a blast catching up, and she helped with my Spanish class because, let me just say...the textbook we're using is awful.  We busted out Guess Who and I described the characters in Spanish, while inserting my own words like "Alfred son...d-bag?"  Needless to say, there were lots of laughs.  I love that I have cousins I'm close to on my mom's side of the family.  On my dad's side, family members don't really keep in touch at all, but I have two cousins that I absolutely adore!  They don't live close, and I haven't seen them in 6 years, but thank Jesus for Facebook!  It's so wonderful to be able to keep up with each other and chat whenever we have a free moment.

Let's face it...it's not that often, but it's one of those things where you take the time. And I'm glad I took the time with L tonight because...man!  I haven't laughed that hard in a while!

YOU'RE STILL MY PAL!!!!

Aubs