My Honorable Husband has decided to retire when our Darling Daughter graduates from high school. We have always wanted to live near a river or a lake in retirement, so we've bought an acre of land 5 minutes from a river and 20 minutes from a lake. Working on finding the land and planning the new house has kept me from blogging as regularly in recent months.

This week is spring break for both of our kids, so our Strong Son is home from college. Yesterday the kids and I went up to the property. There was an ice storm in January that broke four big limbs in a grove of oak trees. Two of them were on the ground, but two were caught up in the tree branches.

The three of us went to work with saws. Type A DD quickly tired of the strenuous work. She reminded us of her spring break reading assignments and went to the car to study. SS and I, both Type Os, kept at it. He climbed up into the tree and got the broken branches down. I cut them into movable pieces so we could get them away from the rest of the trees and stack them. It was hard work. We were dirty and sweaty. But we both loved it. We worked several hours, stopping only at sunset.

The experience again reminded me of the built in differences between As and Os. It's not just what we eat - it's how our bodies respond to work and stress. SS and I found a deep pleasure in the physically demanding outdoor work, which DD could not understand. If HH had been with us, he would have been hanging around the wood pile asking if we were ready to call it quits yet.

In this two blood type family, I must remind myself that I need strenuous physical activity. When the As don't want to participate, I may have to go on alone. At the same time, I mustn't be critical of them. Strenuous work doesn't benefit them the way it does me. They need exercise, but not the same kind. We must remember to respect each other's different physical needs the same way we respect each other's different food lists.