His Own Best Friend

Learner and his family have been rather extroverted this weekend: a seminary ice cream social on Friday night, a 24-hour visit on Saturday from Learner's father (for grandchildren and tourism purposes), and church on Sunday morning (with spur-of-the-moment lunch invitation from another family and a planned dinner with Albert and his clan - both meals very enjoyable), and that's that. Weekend over.

All-out extroversion is rare for Learner. Make no mistake, he's good with people, but easily exhausted by them as well. Much of this comes from his temperament (not a hint of sanguine in him); other parts come from a healthy degree of selfishness and a propensity to be by himself whenever possible (Mrs. Learner swears he's his own best friend because he likes to be alone so much).

After getting his kids in bed (though not yet asleep), Learner made the comment that he might have overdosed this weekend with the wee ones. A statement like this never goes over well with Mrs. Learner, but after a week full of half days in the morning and a weekend of 24/7 presence, he says the library's looking pretty good.

One highlight of the weekend: Learner taught his oldest to ride a bike, an experience that he says was both wonderful and anticlimactic at the same time. Wonderful in that his desire to turn it into a teachable moment of trust (i.e. his oldest trusting him in the process) was fulfilled; anticlimactic in that the whole thing only took about 20 minutes or so and, while he's glad for the short length, he wonders if anybody could have done it just as easily as he did.

By his own self-inflicted, semi-ridiculous thinking, the guy can't win.