On being popular with family

I left Stockholm Friday afternoon with Hemingway, going with my brother and his family to see my parents and help them out with removing some trees from their yard. I rather conveniently managed to sprain my ankle, so I was stuck fixing food and coffee for the others while poor Hemingway slaved away with my family. I think he's so far collected massive family points, both from this and from handling my very talkative American uncle at Baby Bighead's baptism. It's nice when your family likes the people you like too.

I was also very cordially invited by my niece, aged almost four, to come to their house and watch Tonari no Totoro together with her. I've gotta say that I'm rather pleased to have started and encouraged the anime trend that my nieces and nephews are in the middle of right now. I'd pick Totoro or Ponyo as appropriate characters over Barbie any day. I like being invited to my brother's house anyways. He's almost 11 years older than I am, and was one of my greatest heroes when I was small, so it's nice to have a kind of grown-up confirmation that yes, I'm cool enough to be around now. Feels good.

A pretty accurate picture of my niece and I.

Anywho, they're in the market for a house for their family, and have started asking questions about building their own, which is great fun for me. While I'm bad at making any kind of money predictions, I'm pretty excited to hear what they want from a house and draw up some ideas, and it's cool that they think I'm competent enough to do so. Drawing family homes is one of those things I find to be really interesting. You need a pretty good understanding of the family in and of itself, and it's also a lesson in not going overboard with unnecessary things. Functional, smart and enjoyable - it's all that I want to do really. I'm going to go out there sometime soon to show them a whole bunch of other houses and see what kind of things they like. Just as a thought experiment in general, possibly something that will never be built for real, it will be fun. On the off chance that it does happen, I want it to be as great of a home as they could ever want.

Little things that spark your interest are good when you need to be roused from day-to-day dreariness, I think. Even if I have a hard time getting myself to do much of anything at all, I still feel a strong interest to figure something good out for my brother.