This is Alex.

She is fucking awesome. She’s only 20, but as she’ll tell you, she’s had “a lot of life” and therefore has the poise and maturity of someone much older. I wrote about her before but that post was more of a therapeutic outlet than anything truly insightful. Because obviously this blog is totally insightful every other time.

Alex came over one Saturday night to my apartment. After we spent Christmas together, as a huge awkward Brady Bunch-esque family, we started texting and facebooking and just generally keeping in touch on a virtual level. We finally decided we needed to hang out for real. She came over and so did Bex, but poor Bex had to pretty much hang out with R2 since Alex and I were having serious what-is-our-life-bonding moments.

I gave her liquor and she gave me weed and as we got a little tipsy, we became more at ease, and it was awesome. I can’t even express how amazing it is to have someone who knows exactly what it’s like to have my mom be dating her dad. Because her dad is dating my mom!

So anyway, Alex and I agreed that it takes way too much time and energy to say we were hanging out with “my mom’s/dad’s boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s daughter” but also that relationship is so awkward that it wouldn’t be satisfying simply to call each other a friend. And then Alex said out loud what I’m sure we’d both been thinking for a while:

“It would just make my life so much easier if they’d get married already and I could call you my stepsister.”

Uh, yeah, it really would! So, mom? Bill? Want to get on that?

I’m actually totally kidding. It would throw me for such a loop if that happened anytime soon, but the point still stood that Alex and I needed a better term for one another that took up less time to say and also still pointed out how awkward our relationship really is. She suggested Quasi-Step-Sisters.

We agreed that would be perfect, especially since I’ve always wanted a sister (but got three brothers) and she’s always wanted a brother (but got two sisters). So now, when someone asks me how many siblings I have, I can actually say: one brother, two half-brothers, and three quasi-step-sisters.