Saturday, April 21, 2012

Thankful Thursday - The poor Non-Genealogical Spouse

Have you ever left your spouse waiting on you to come to bed because:

A) 23andme had new Relative Finder cousins populate,
B) new 23andme test results came in
C) the 1940 census (or some other great new) became available to index or search at familysearch.org 
D) Ancestry.com released a great new dataset
E) Long long relatives emailed and *must* be contacted back *immediately* to gather their genealogical knowledge
F) Geni/MyHeritage has added more record collections to RecordMatches, or you see a ton of new SmartMatches

I'm guilty of all that and more.  So today I would like to publicly declare my gratitude for the often forgotten,  poor Non-Genealogical Spouse (NGS).  Especially my own.

It is the NGS who is left alone in bed while their spouse is up all night researching long dead ancestors.

It is often the NGS who is sent out to work in the "real world" so the Genealogical Spouse (GS) can spend more money on documents, subscriptions to genealogy sites, DNA tests and more!

It is often the NGS who is left at home while the genealogy addict attends conferences and rambles around graveyards and libraries.  Or worse still, is dragged to cemeteries and libraries to "help"!

Since the 1940 census became available for indexing and arbitrating I have been working pretty hard on that (over 12,000 records arbitrated so far).  Cooking and housework haven't been getting done very much by me, leaving it for my poor husband.

In the past I have sent my husband to libraries to retrieve copies of microfilm, dragged him to libraries so I could have two sets of eyes reading over microfilm, dragged him to libraries to research in Special Collections, taken him to photograph gravestones, sent him out to photograph gravestones, etc.  And of course I have babbled endlessly about genealogy (he says that if I blogged about genealogy as much as I talk about genealogy the internet would be full lol).

My husband is a musician, and recently wrote a song about his sad NGS position.  I'm curious as to what others NGS occupations are? (mine is also a carpenter, but thats not his passion, music is, and I find it as uninteresting as he finds my genealogy no doubt!)  So please, give him a quick listen and VOTE for him here! I recommend 10 More Minutes but the other 2 are cute as well.

Seriously though, I am thankful for my wonderful husband who I adore and our 5 beautiful children (and one on the way!)  Their patience with my lifelong genealogy addiction is amazing!

Update: I have now had him take an autosomal DNA test for genetic genealogy thru 23andme, see his video of taking the test HERE.


4 comments:

  1. Great post and song...do you have the lyrics posted anywhere?

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  2. hehehe thanks! He posted the lyrics at the site that hosts the song http://www.reverbnation.com/artist/artist_songs/2467580

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  3. This is a great post and song! Made me smile!

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  4. He has entered that song, and some others, including "10 more minute" which is also about my genealogy obsession into a contest, please vote for him to win, you can vote up to once an hour
    https://artistsignal.com/thegenealogywidower

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