Sorry. That may have been misleading. Not YOU, the internet world. Let me esplain. Nope. There is too much. Let me sum up.
My fabulous Uncle “Jay” used to always say:
You can pick your nose
And you can pick your friends
But you can’t pick your relatives
I blindly believed this little “nugget” of knowledge for many years but today I will lay waste to Uncle Jay’s conclusions.
1. You can not pick your nose, not all the time, not in public, not without a tissue, and MOST especially not in front of your mom, who (if she’s me) will tell you how yucky and germy it is. She will then make you wash your hands and sing the entire alphabet song while rubbing the soap in.
2. You can sort of pick your friends. Sometimes you pick friends who don’t care to be friends with you. They publicly mock you in Junior High because you still listen to New Kids on the Block so you go home and burn all of your Jordan Knight posters and destroy your Hangin’ Tough cassette, only to continue to be publicly shunned and have your name immortalized on the bathroom wall in permanent marker along with a word your mother told you NEVER to say. (Incidentally, I did find Hangin’ Tough in mint condition at a Value Village in Quebec one summer during college so I’m doing better now.)
Sometimes they pick you when you don’t want to be picked.
3. Once and only once in your life do you get to pick your relatives.
Yesterday was a day of slovenliness. If Sunday was a day of rest, then Saturday was a day of dead-cheese-laying-on-the-couch-in-a-bathrobe. Seriously. I didn’t eat lunch until 3:45 and didn’t shower until the evening. I cleaned nothing. We played and chilled all day.
At about 9pm, I got the bug of productivity and started cleaning like mad. We stayed up until 3 in the morning, me cleaning and watching the West Wing Season 1 and Dan stirring up newt’s eyes and toad’s fingers on his computer to create a new program to help with the administration of the Cirque des Mamans.
At some point around 1 am, I was taking out the recycling when I realized I was looking like a piece of hud and was mumbling some sort of incoherent half-song, half-baby-babble-chant about “Ooo-blah-bagga-bladda-ya-dadda-wa-joojie” aloud to myself, while shuffling tin cans in a house that had been a disaster all day.
DYD sat in his pajamas unfazed. He looked up at me and smiled and continued to work.
I was babbling like an idiot in a strange made-up language, watching left-wing propaganda in his living room and keeping us up until 3 am because I wasted the whole day and he was smiling at me with love, while working on a program I asked him to write for me.
I would never EVER have felt comfortable in this state with ANY boyfriend I ever had. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Do you know who this guy is? He’s my family. This should have hit me on our wedding day when we were sealed for time and eternity and everyone told us we were officially a family now, no matter how small. This should have hit me when we had our children. It did, in a way, each of those times.
But for some reason last night, it hit me the hardest. Life is strange. Dan is my family. We are a family. He is my closest relative and I got to pick him. Uncle Jay, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
It’s strange how that kind of get-up-and-do-something productivity decides to kick in at the end of the day. I’ve spent an entire day being lazy and playing with my kids. It’s now almost 11pm and I’ve suddenly decided to sit at the computer and get some work done.
Umm… OK, so what am I doing here, reading your blog?
And what a great family he is too! And he comes with a great family of his own as an added bonus! Yes I’d definitely say the boy is a keeper! Yeah, DYD!
I think that’s called an “apostrophe”, er….. “epiphany????????”
I love this! All kinds of warm fuzzies while I read this. Now that’s a term I haven’t used since “I” was listening to New Kids on the Block!
Thank you for visiting my blog, Kathryn. It means a lot to me that you read that post and that you liked it.
And DYD, thank you for your comment! Your wife IS one of those I described…
Very, very sweet.
yay for dead-cheese-laying-on-the-couch-in-a-bathrobe! That’s going to be me in about 3 hours after I finish working this morning.
Great, great quote at the beginning. I love Princess Bride.
Tim is my family, too. And we count the cats as well. I think it’s insulting to all types of people to define a family as a husband, a wife, and children. There are so many types of families, and they strengthen our society through love.
I know just what you mean
(she says glancing lovingly at the man grinding raw pork 8 feet away from her in the kitchen…)
wOO! Must have been the weekend for slovenliness. I never did clean up-but the babysitter did when we went out Saturday night. YAY!!
Yes, DYM… you can pick your nose, and you can pick your friends, but can you pick your relatives out of police line-up for picking their friend’s nose?
Tee hee…
I know this feeling perfectly. And however well you may get along with the family you were born into, isn’t it miraculous to have found your real family?
You are so lucky DYM. My husband’s and my schedules are total opposites: he’s morning, I’m night. But I love him just the same. I love those little epiphanies where you fall in love all over again.
You know what? You get to pick your family when you adopt too! (proving Uncle Jay even more wrong…) Thanks for sharing!
Mary
You know, your husband just sounds like a really wonderful guy. I love hearing that there are great guys still out there. I happened to have caught a great one myself and find it quite reassuring that I did not, in fact, get the last good one. That my friends are enjoying greatness too!!
🙂
My Dad always quoted it:
“You can pick your nose, you can pick your friends, but you cannot pick your friends noses”
Hooray for sweet husbands who love us just they way we are!
Your hubby sounds wonderful. Mine would be snozzing he likes his sleep. I also think my husband is my closet kin. I cant imagine him not in the family. 😉
What a wonderful post. Aren’t husbands amazing? It really is such a blessing to have a good one. And to know that they are your family and your family for eternity — that is something that is beyond amazing. It is a feeling the lucky know, but cannot describe.
Awww, sweet! I love those moments!!!
Emily (who spent the night bowing to the porcelain gods while dh took care of one sick kid and one kid that woke up multiple times. Gotta love great husbands!)
Awwww, that was really sweet.
Oh goodness, that’s so great. I really, really, really loved this post. Except for the whole part about the New Kids on the Block. Because that’s just wrong. Wrong, I say!
To torture me, my friends will sing New Kids on the Block songs at karaoke. They’re all younger than me (many years younger) and think this is just so hilarious.
Although, you know what? You listen to whomever you want. Anyone who mocks you for listening to music is an idiot. I had to hide my love for Neil Diamond all through out middle and high school.
Awwww! Sigh.
that was one truly wonderful post. I love you like crazy. I know I didn’t get to pick you but I am glad you are my family.