One big happy interconnected family

My brother-in-law (not the one with the hilarious new girlfriend, another one I haven't mentioned before) lives overseas, and has done (in various locations) for a few years now. So whenever he's in town, it turns into quite the occasion. He stopped off in Vancouver on his way back from a conference in Toronto last week, so I got to spend lots of time with my in-laws, who are, without exception, totally awesome people and wonderful cooks.

I'm going to have to insert a quick who's who here because the following makes no sense otherwise! Here's a list of Mr E Man's siblings, in chronological order, with their spousoids on the right:

Sibling---------------- Spousoid
BIL1------------------- ---HNG
SIL1------------------- ---Husband1
SIL2 ----------------------Husband2
BIL2 (lives overseas) ---Girlfriend we haven't met yet
Mr E Man (the baby!) ---Me

There's a 10 year gap between BIL1 and Mr E Man.

HNG was meeting SIL1 for the first time, and they both instantly said they recognised each other. They still haven't figured out how, but no-one was really surprised, given all the other family connections:

• BIL1 knew Husband1 before SIL1 ever met him.
• Mr E Man and I knew HNG before she ever met BIL1.
• I knew BIL2 before I ever met Mr E Man.

We had a good laugh at how incestuous we all are, but I think it's just a sign of a happy family who all get along and who have mostly stayed in the same area. Mr E Man and BIL2 have lots of high school friends in common, and so do my two sisters-in-law. In my own case, I met BIL2 at several parties in my first year here, thanks to the same friends who would eventually introduce me to his little brother. In fact, the first time I met Mr E Man, our very brief conversation was all about how his brother was doing*. And last year, a high school friend of Mr E Man realized that his wife's new friend, HNG, would be a really good match for BIL1. Mr E Man and I weren't there the night of the set-up, but we were in on it.

The names are another thing entirely. SIL1 has the same name as me, and SIL2 has the same name as my sister. Husband1 has the same name as my Dad, and Mr E Man shares his name with one of my uncles. The wedding was very confusing.

Living as I do so many thousands of miles from my own parents and sister, I'm very happy to have found myself a whole new Canadian family.

Darwinian gardening techniques on my other blog...
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*BIL2 and his friends are known pranksters. The first time my friend and I met them, they said they were lawyers. The second time, they said they were carpet cleaners and that they'd only said they were lawyers the first time to impress us. We asked them how to get stains out of white carpets and they bluffed their way through it pretty well, considering that they are in fact lawyers. So when BIL2 told us at one party that he was moving to Kosovo the next day, we totally didn't believe him. We took the piss mercilessly: "hey baby, I'm shipping out to Kosovo in the morning" in a fake sexy accent and all that. We were quite embarrassed when we found out he actually was in Kosovo, working with the UN.