Happy Sickness!

[Disclaimer: This post should only be read within the context of the previous two posts--Today's Covid-19 Thoughts and Do You Feel Like a Goblin?--and as part of this entire blog. Life has many dimensions. This is about one. I write it fully aware of our privileged situation in this experience.]

And, now, some recent moments with my children (plus a few other tidbits), as previously shared on Facebook:

[Younger] was Mr. Cheerful on our walk just now, waving to everyone he saw. To those close enough to hear he yelled, "Happy Easter and Happy Sickness! I say that because it means more time at home with your family."

This afternoon [older] decided to adopt a grand, evil aristocrat voice to start saying, "Thank you, my servant," to [spouse] and me." He really played it up for a while. Then a bit ago he got more serious. "You know, really, you kind of are like my servant. You cook for me, you clean for me, you do my laundry. You drive me places. You even read to me. So really you are kind of my servant." I'm hoping this realization is quickly followed by an increase in appreciative gratitude and more willingness to help out.

[Spouse]'s been working on getting our old mechanical trains up and running. This is the second time in the past hour that one of the boys has run up to me screaming in pain with two trains getting wound in his hair. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way.

When anthropomorphising goes too far: the boys are having an in-depth discussion about where their toy trains go to the bathroom.

He wouldn't sit down to eat until he had invited and assembled all of this "friends."

Overheard from cooking instructions in the kitchen . . .

[Spouse]: "Do you want to know a secret? My parents didn't let me use knives until I was a sixth-grader."

[Older]: "Wow! Then how did you get to be such a great person? I mean, you're still a great person even though no one is perfect."

[Younger] was so excited to show me this "crystal" he found. It's now tucked safely away in his treasure chest. It's a joy how even the smallest things are magical to the young.

"Hey, Mom, watch how adorable I can be."

(Distraction tactic uttered by [older] right after [spouse] said it was time to pick up the toy train tracks.)

Parent questions you're not prepared to answer number 329:

"[Older], don't make [younger] crash his bike!"

"Why?"

Covid-19 Quarantine Journal, Day 1: Though this should merely feel like a regular Sunday at the end of a regular week, a day of rest and recovery and happy time with family, the children seem to have a preternatural awareness that they should be pacing themselves for a long, languid time of relaxation so, contrariness being their natures, have done exactly the opposite. They have already exceeded their boredom and restlessness limits, demanding constant attention and interaction. No activity satisfies them for long, and they frequently descend into violent disputes. No physical injuries have resulted as of yet, though one favorite drinking vessel has been destroyed. And we remain only partially through the first day. As I consider the prospect of this enforced period of isolation, I fear we may not emerge unscathed. Indeed, much more and I might begin to fear for our very lives.

Even after I made them run and bike a bunch they still had enough aggressive energy they felt the need to attack this tree for a while.

[Spouse]: "What's your most pressing laundry need?"

Me: "Um, none of it's actually pressing at the moment."

Sitting on a nest full of eggs.

One of my first status updates right after work closed and stay-at-home efforts were in place:

You'd think being an extreme introvert I'd be loving this social distancing, but so far I don't feel distant enough. There's a constant bombardment of messages with updates and reactions. Schools, all levels of government, work, various businesses (the autoshop, even), places we frequent and patronize, colleagues, friends, family. Never a quiet moment safe from remote social contact. I just want to crawl deep inside myself to have a withdrawn, taciturn (internal, invisible, isolated) freak out and I can't because my focus keeps getting pulled outward.

(So if my responses seem absent or lacking, that's why. 🙂)

And a more recent online find:

Introverts' joy of lockdown getting ruined by extroverts filling their schedules with video appointments

Introverts were enjoying the lockdown. Suddenly they had no social obligations nor the social anxiety that goes along with declining invitations, canceling them, or attending them. Introverts were reading, gardening, baking, making things, learning languages, sharpening skills, and basking in quietude.

The extroverts, however, took note of this new state of affairs and declared it intolerable. Invitations for online gatherings began pouring in and, for introverts, social anxiety is creeping back.

Homeschool handwriting exercise for the older to start his day.

Apparently this is not my normal greeting:

A recent silly personality quiz:

Statistical "Which Character" Personality Quiz

This is an interactive personality quiz that will determine your similarity with a long list of fictional characters.

Background

When the creator of this website would tell people that he published personality tests on the internet, people would usually ask him if he meant that he worked at BuzzFeed on their "Which character are you?" personality quizzes. And he would have to explain that he did not and had never been very interested in that style of test. These quizzes are very fun, as evidenced by their extreme popularity. But they are not that meaningful, two people who get the same result on a typical example of these tests don't necessarily have much more in common than two randomly paired individuals. So for the longest time this website had not one character match personality quiz, but I guess it was inevitable because here is an attempt at a slightly more scientific, but still silly, "Which Character Are You?" test.

This test was created by getting volunteers to rate the perceived personality of a variety of characters (currently 510). A user's self ratings are compared against these profiles and the closest match is found. The documentation on how this quiz works can be found here.

Happy sickness!