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I’ve always hated that saying, “Don’t cry because it’s over.  Smile because it happened.”  With the exception of pain — physical or emotional .  THAT I don’t cry about when it finally passes.  Everything else, I cry about long before it’s over.  I think of it as pre-mourning.  It works for me.

Instead I like that quote from Synecdoche, New York: “The end is built into the beginning.”  Everything you start automatically gets an end point tacked on, whether or not that end point is known before it happens.  I can take comfort in that idea because it allows me to mourn beforehand.  I know the end is coming, even if I don’t know when the end will be.  So it’s totally cool to indulge the sadness, to engage in pre-mourning rituals.

The school year is coming to a close.  We have one more year at this school before we have to switch again and learn another new community.  That school will be the final buffer between the now and that world beyond when the twins will go find their passion at a distant school and only call me for pizza money and to send more Costco socks.

[I will seriously have a nervous breakdown if they only call me for pizza money and Costco socks.]

[I don’t think it will only be pizza money and Costco socks, but you never know.]

So I’m blue, thinking about them growing up and away.  I want it to happen; I mean, I really want them to find work that is meaningful and happy moments.  But I wince as buffer after buffer gets removed, pushing me closer to that end point that was built into that beginning.  They weren’t going to stay my little babies forever.

[Seriously, I’ve tried keeping them small, but they don’t listen.  They keep growing.]

I know the pre-mourning is just the working out of fears of how the actual mourning will go.  Because I don’t know if it will be pizza money and Costco socks or something more.  Something more akin to today, albeit with older humans on all fronts.  I’m hoping for more of today.

While it would be ten times easier to take the damn Myers-Briggs quiz (it’s a quiz, right?) and definitively get my type, it is a lot more fun to look at Myers-Briggs types in action and try to reverse engineer my category.  I have determined, once and for all, that I am an INTJ based on how I organize myself.

Basecamp?  Yes, I love Basecamp (though Trello and Slack in combination with Google Docs are close seconds).  I love any organizational hub where I can colour-coordinate items and tag people.  And notifications make me so happy.  I put two notifications on every meeting — one fifteen minutes before and one five minutes before.  I’m smiling just writing that.

I can eliminate INFJ at this point.  I don’t need to be motivated to complete tasks.  Crossing them off my to do list is enough of a motivator.  But ISTJ… wow.  That sounds like me, too.  I love spreadsheets.  Like love them with all my heart.  A colour-coordinated spreadsheet… I would have married one if Josh hadn’t gotten to me first.

I can’t tell if I was more interested in the Myers-Briggs element of the article or the fact that we were talking about organizational stuff.

So does your Myers-Briggs type match with how you organized yourself?  Or are you able to reverse engineer your category at this point?

I read an incredible story of two photographers who unknowingly captured the exact same moment on film.  They were standing far enough apart that they didn’t know the other person was there, and they snapped a picture of waves hitting a lighthouse at the exact same millisecond.  You can see the two shots side-by-side in the article.

It drove home this thought of how few moments in my day someone sees the exact same way at the exact same time.  Forget about the fact that I spend most of my day alone so no one is seeing what I see.  (Except Linus.  But Linus doesn’t care unless it involves hay or alfalfa cookies.)  When I’m not alone, it comes down to milliseconds: I blink during one part of a second while Josh blinks in a different part of a second, and because of that, we don’t see the exact same thing.

It’s just a reminder of how important each individual is in this world.  Who else will see the world through your eyes?

No pranks here because I am not a fan of April Fool’s Day.

But I was curious how churches would handle Easter falling on April Fool’s Day.  Are church leaders joking around during the sermon or using the convergence to talk about how we should treat each other better?

I’ve never been to church for Easter — only random services on non-holidays — so I’m not sure how somber the sermon usually is on a non-April-Fool’s-Day Easter.  I’m assuming it usually focuses on rebirth and spring and family building because our spring holiday — Pesach — has themes of rebirth, spring, and family building.

The last time Easter fell on April Fool’s Day was 1956.  The next time it will fall will be 2029.

So if you went to services, what did your church do today?

Beyond brushing and flossing your teeth or washing your face, what do you do before bed?

I need to tell you my bedtime routine backwards because the things closest to lights out are things I always do, and the earlier we get, the more variety you’ll see.  So right before lights out, we listen to the Shipping Forecast.  (And sometimes whisper to each other, “Crap, Iceland is going to be dealing with squally showers tonight.)  Before that, I write one sentence in my bullet journal.  Before that, I check email one last time.  Before that, I am looking up something on the Internet from a television show or book.  Before that, I’m probably watching a television show or reading a book.  Before that, I am almost definitely playing one last round of some stupid game on my phone.  Before that, I am playing all the earlier rounds of the stupid game on my phone.

Night after night after night.

A survey looked to see if your score on a Myers-Briggs test could predict your nighttime routine, proving that our personalities naturally draw us towards certain activities.

Remember how I was trying to figure out if I was an ISTJ or an INTJ?  I am definitely NOT an ISTJ — I don’t drink any alcohol much less hard liquor.  But I am totally an INTJ.  Internet before bed?  Uh, 5 out of 7 pre-bed activities use the Internet.  I was also able to eliminate the possibility of ISFJ, because I only watch television because Josh wants to watch television.  I don’t think I’ve ever turned the television on when Josh has been out-of-town.  INFJ is still a possibility because I like to read.  But INTJ sounds the most like me.

So what is your Myers-Briggs type and what is your bedtime routine?  Does it match up?