Once removes are a cumbersome way to refer to people you spend a lot of time with.

Agreed -- when you're doing genealogy research, there's a need for precision, but when face to face with humans, it feels more human to just go for the plain terms.

(The problem in my family isn't the removes, of which we don't have very many, but the fact that everyone is a step or a half or an ex or we aren't really related at all but damn it don't tell us we aren't family.)

I balance it out by having the most interesting kids.

Um, no. I'm sorry. You're pretty interesting (and not just that!) in and of yourself. The kids are a most wonderful bonus, but still.

Do you mean 1st cousins once removed? Those are your cousins' kids. Second cousins would be the kids of your Dad's cousins

This chart is handy for these discussions

[link]

we aren't really related at all but damn it don't tell us we aren't family.

I've got a few of these. Their mother's brother is married to my mother's sister. Not actually related at all, but definitely considered in the vague "related" category.

Yeah, on my Dad's side there's a 40-year spread between the first and last cousin, so the generations are all over the place. My Mom was also the youngest of 5 and married late, but so did my cousins, so I'm smack in the middle of the two generations (cousins and once removeds). In France though, there is a great expression for this relationship. For them I'm a "tante à la mode de Bretagne" (roughly, a Brittany-style aunt).

Huh, I'm in a totally different time zone now. Board time is my time.

Confusing!

I don't know how that family didn't realize they had an extra boarding pass, etc.

I've got a bunch of second cousins once removed who are within a year or so of my age. Their great-grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, but their great-grandmother was eighteen years older than my grandmother.

This chart is handy for these discussions

Good chart.

I've been reading, well listening in my car really, Dune. I've been enjoying it and having a fully cast audiobook is just cool. I know there is a movie and I have a morbid curiosity to watch it sometime just to see how a book this introspective can be made into a movie. He thought, what makes me want to watch a movie just because I've read the book? I know I'll be bitterly disappointed.

For them I'm a "tante à la mode de Bretagne" (roughly, a Brittany-style aunt).

Oh, interesting! I wonder why?

I generally have functioned as an aunt to my first cousins. Our age spread isn't the hugest (there are 12 of us, plus two steps, from ages 41 to 14; i'm the 2nd eldest) but I'm much closer in age to most of my aunts and uncles than I am to my cousins.

I don't know how that family didn't realize they had an extra boarding pass, etc.

It was a chartered flight, so they weren't going commercial. I've never personally charted a plane to fly to Paris, so I don't know what the rules are for private planes.