First cousin twice removed is correct.

I was very excited when I finally learned that "once removed" meant a generation instead of some further extension laterally on the family tree.

Speaking of trees, the Arborist is coming tomorrow. Because while I feel like I've been flailing a bit and unproductive I have actually done shit. Like meet with and schedule the arborist to trim my trees.

Other things I have managed to do:

Contact liaison for Matilda's Japanese abroad program and go over application requirements.

Pursuant to that, ask Matilda's school for her transcripts.

Follow up email with the gardener (as separate from the arborist) to tame my Wisteria.

Arrange for all the women of the Sacred Circle to join me and Matilda on Friday for G&Ts and pizza. They are the people I want to be with on that day.

So even though Matilda and i have been in a funk for the month of August, stuff is moving forward even if it feels like a whole day's effort to get off one email.

Addendum: I was discussing my to-do list with my friend Kat Kelley at the comic book store.

Me: So the arborist will come and he'll raise the crown on the front yard tree, and he will "proportionally" shape the two tall back yard trees. Because my backyard neighbor, Faustine, was complaining how they were shading out the light in her kitchen.

Kat: Oooh, Faustine is such a good name for a low-stakes antagonist.

Me: It really is! And then I contacted Fiona, the Gardener...

Kate: Fiona the Gardener! This story is writing itself. What great character names!

Me: Like Cottagecore but crossed with Mapp and Lucia comedy of manners. Oh, and the arborist's name is Remy.

Kat: [sigh of satisfaction] Perfect.

Make it a low-stakes nothing-much-happens bedtime story.

Those would be great character names!

Cousin Explainer tea towel

My grandparents were cousins by marriage (there was another Ransohoff-Westheimer marriage in the generation above theirs) and so there is a whole branch of that side of the family where we are both third and fourth cousins.

Going in the other direction, I have seen it asserted that one's grandparents' siblings should be called your grand-aunt or grand-uncle, not great-aunt or great-uncle, but they do not seem to be getting much traction.

we are both third and fourth cousins.

Whoa. And no time travel?

You'd be amazed at what shenanigans people get up to without time travel.

At one point we had custody of a family bible (my father's mother's mother's family). They kept marrying cousins and names kept repeating - keeping Columbus separate from Columbus F. On my mother's side, one great-great- grandmother of mine married, he died and she married his brother. Supposedly had 20 (!) children, including several sets of twins. My mother remembered Milton and Wilton,, Cordelia and Ophelia (someone was reading Shakespeare that year) as well as several others.

I think my most interesting genealogical tidbit along those lines is my great grandfather whose mother, first wife, and second wife (my great grandmother) were all named Emma