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This comes up a lot. I find the easiest way to remember is to draw a picture - one of those family tree charts with one couple, the first Mr. Blair, at the top on the first line, all of their children on the second line, all of their grandchildren on the third line, great-grandchildren on the fourth line and so forth. If you draw it in your mind, for eight generations, it will be easier than drawing it on paper. Also, for simplicity, assume nobody married a cousin, which is usally a false assumption for people in rural areas before 1860.
Everyone on the second line is a sibling. Everyone on the third line - the grandchildren of the original couple - is a first cousin to everyone else on the third line, except their siblings. Everyone on the fourth line is a second cousin to everyone else on the fourth line, unless they are siblings or first cousins. So it goes - everyone on line "X" is a "Yth" cousin to everyone else on line "X", where "Y" is two less than X, unless they are closer.
For our next trick, assume you are down on the 6th line. Your father and his wife are on line 5. Your father has some first cousins. They too are one line above you. They are your first cousins once removed. Your grandfather has some first cousins. They are two lines above you. They are your first cousins twice removed. Your great grandfather's first cousins are yours three times removed, and from then on you add a remove for each great. Five times removed would be the first cousin of your (5-2 = 3, so 3 Greats) G-G-G grandfather. (10 times removed would be 8 greats.)
You can figure out how many times removed any cousin is from any other by how many lines separate them.
Everyone with European roots is supposedly 12th cousin or closer to 95% of everyone else with European roots, by the by. There is a good chance, if you and your spouse have European roots and both your families were in the US fo rmore than 150 years, that you are related somehow - 9th cousins four times removed or some such.
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