Bugs, Ancestry, And DNA

We were up early yesterday morning because we had an appointment for Wilkie’s Pest Control to come by and do their quarterly spraying. If you live in Florida, you have a “bug man” because if you don’t, all kinds of critters will find their way inside your house. Wilkie’s is a family-owned business that has always treated us right, and if they tell you they’re going to be at your house at a certain time, they don’t keep you waiting all day until they finally show up. In fact, the man was here yesterday about 20 minutes early, which was fine with us.

After he left, we went to Leon’s Automotive, another small family-owned business we know we can trust. We had dropped the Pacifica off there Monday to have an oil change, have them change all the filters, rotate the tires, and look things over so we will know we are in good shape for our upcoming trip out west.

Back at home, I wrote another chapter in my new John Lee Quarrels book and answered some e-mails that I hadn’t gotten to earlier. Three were from people inviting us to look them up either on our way to Arizona or back again, offering us a place to stay overnight, or dinner, or whatever worked for us. While we appreciate everybody’s hospitality, we don’t have an itinerary set in stone. We spent too many years always having to be someplace for a rally or a speaking gig or something when we were fulltime RVers, and on most of our previous road trips since we sold the RV, we have had a schedule to meet. Except for knowing that we have hotel reservations in Arizona starting May 17^th, we’re going to make this a laid-back trip, stopping along the way when we see something that interests us. We would hate to make plans with somebody and then have to change them at the last minute or feel obligated to skip something we want to do along the way to be there.

Another of the e-mails I got left me scratching my head. Someone I know wrote to me to say that she knew I was into genealogy and tell me how disappointed she is with the Ancestry website, especially their DNA results. She told me that she did her DNA last year, and when looking at her matches on Ancestry, it shows one of her uncles as a match, but not his two daughters. She said she knew they both submitted DNA tests to Ancestry, and she can’t figure out why they are not showing up as matches.

I wrote back to tell her that maybe Ancestry just hasn’t gotten the files uploaded yet, but she said no, the cousins told her that they had other matches. Then she added that when her uncle married his wife, he adopted her two little girls from her first marriage, and according to Ancestry, they wouldn’t show up on her DNA chart. I wrote back again and told her that Ancestry was correct. If her uncle adopted the two children, there would be no DNA connection because they don’t share the same bloodline. She responded, saying of course they share the same bloodline, he adopted them, and they have his last name. She said she is not going to renew her Ancestry membership because it’s obviously a bunch of crap. Okay, fine, you do that.

When I was telling Terry about it we had to laugh because sometimes people come up with the strangest things when it comes to their families. We once spent some time talking to a waitress on a slow evening at a place where we were having dinner, and when we told her I was a writer, she said she always wanted to do something like that, or anything but waitressing, but she just wasn’t sure what. I told her that was okay, I was 55 years old (at that time), and I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. (And I still don’t!)

She laughed and said her mother always complained because she had not gone to college like her sister, the “successful” daughter. Then she told us that even though her sister had a college degree and was a school teacher, that didn’t mean she was smart. She went on to say that her sister had had the same boyfriend since they were in 7th grade, but a year or so earlier, he had lost a leg to an IED while serving overseas. He was back home now and out of rehab, and the mother was pushing them to get married. She told us the sister confided in her she was hesitant about that because as much as she loved the guy, she just didn’t know if she could handle it if their child was born without a leg like its father. I almost shot Pepsi out of my nose when she told us, “and she’s the successful sister!” I don’t know what she studied in college, but it obviously wasn’t biology or any other science.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – I followed my heart, and it led me to the refrigerator.