Rain and Family Time

Yesterday, Sunday, was the first at-home family day for quite a while. And the weather reversed, too. I built a fire in the woodstove for the first time in several weeks, and the rain drummed continuously and soothingly on our metal roof.

Aidan wanted to go outside in the rain with his stroller, but after little sleep the night before I didn’t feel up to that. I brought his stroller upstairs and walked him up and down for quite a while and then he spent quite a while wheeling it around and putting Pikachu in it — he has a stuffed Pikachu pillow that he got several years back and it is more like a friend than a pillow to him.

There is a lot of space upstairs. It runs probably 30 feet of open floor. I could easily do my exercising and push Aidan at the same time. Do you hear my enthusiasm???
How we spent our quiet day: I made waffles for breakfast. I read the book “Flow” by Mihaly C-something. Changed bandages, kept the fire going. Sean saw me doing a temperament test and wanted to do one himself. The first one we tried had a bug and didn’t compute. That rather pleased him. He thought his strange profile had brought down their program. In the second one he tried, he profiled as an ISTP — which rather disgusted him as it labels him a “realist”. He wanted to be some strange mutant temperament that no one had ever had before.
Later on made the dough for pizza and got into a book discussion with Sean. He had read Lord Brockhurst (Brian Jacques) and was outraged by the way the “good” badger treated the evil wildcat at the end of the story (I won’t go into details). We talked about justice/mercy, and the responsibility of good guys to use their power well. Then somehow we ended up talking, with Brendan involved now, about how labelling someone with a negative label (like “vermin”) seems to make it OK to hurt them or treat them badly. Like Hitler and the Jews. I tried to point out that you don’t want to go too far the other way and sympathize with the villains at the expense of what’s really right and wrong.

Then somehow we moved to football. It was one of those discussions.

I made the pizza meanwhile. Pizza takes a long time to make which is why it’s usually reserved for Sunday. In addition to the dough and letting it rise, I make white sauce, simmer BBQd chicken bits, fry bacon, chop pineapples and ham. It’s pretty good though with a few jalapenos as well. The boys mostly prefer pepperoni so we make a couple of those too.

Then Kevin wanted to play a new board game with the kids. I forget the name now but it is a murder mystery which takes place in a monastery. Kevin says it involves lots of logical thinking and it took a long time, too. They played 2 games in a row: Kevin, Liam, Sean, and Kieron.

Clare practiced her piano — a Sense and Sensibility soundtrack song — she is getting quite good at it.

Then Clare REALLY wanted Liam to watch Henry V before we take it back to the library. So they did that. I forget what I did — OH that’s right, I reorganized Aidan’s large bin of medical supplies — all the detritus from the hospital stays and different stages of his life — the feed bags he won’t use anymore, the oxygen tubing and pulse-oximeters that we might still need, lots of bandaging and alcohol swabs, several binkies (Paddy claimed them and made a collection of them beside the bed). It was like an archeological dig. Aidan was interested but a little bit anxious. He kept saying: “I don’t need that! I’m all better!” as he peered into the contents.

After they were asleep I filled out temperament profiles for all the members of the family: Is there a profile for obsessives??? I came out an INFP (almost evenly divided between feeling and thinking), Kevin and Liam were ISTJs (I think they are actually more INTJs-- they’re not at all into leadership or bureacracy or procedures), Brendan was an ISTP like Sean (that seems rather unlikely), Clare was an ISFJ and Kieron was an ISFP. (the description actually sounds more like Clare) The test is HERE. The one Sean ruined with his mutantness was better in the questions asked, I thought. I came up much higher in INtroversion than the others, too. I was 89%, Liam and Brendan were 78%, Clare was only 33% but Kevin and Kieron were 56%. Maybe it’s accurate but it would be a bit surprising.