7 Quick Takes about Cute Jellyfish, Wanting to Escape the Tan Menace, and Cracked Windshield Confessions

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

In a phone conversation with Phillip, I was venting about feeling like we are perpetually behind. We consistently have 3 million projects that we're "working on" but only time to work on them once a week if we're lucky, and every time we finish something it's like three more things have been added to our plates in the meantime. Does everyone feel like this, or are we doing something wrong to be particularly ineffective at life?

That seemed like a perfect moment in the conversation for my phone to run out of battery and just up and die. It was a clear confirmation that no, we are not on top of things. But we never did get to resume that conversation and decide whether it's just us.

—2—

Phillip's parents are here for the week, and we've been having fun. They got to see the 8-year-old compete in a gymnastics meet. Unfortunately, the gym was sweltering hot so they had to step outside and cool off between every event, then I would text them when it was time to come back.

Another day we went to a local lunch- and brunch-only restaurant. It's locally known for its cozy cottage vibe and also its good food.

I got the crepe. Look at that presentation!

After lunch, we walked around the grounds of the restaurant. The end of March and beginning of April are objectively the ugliest months in New England, but even so, we could appreciate how beautiful everything would be during the summer months. 

—3—

My in-laws and I also peeked into a greenhouse and gift shop, and I just died at these cute little air plants that they made to look like jellyfish:

—4—

Another day, my in-laws and I took a historical trolley tour. We learned a lot and it inspired me to plan some history-themed day trips for my kids to suffer through this summer vacation. The kids truly do not appreciate how lucky they are to live here, but when I remember how dumb I was and how I cared about nothing except for my friends and Blink-182 until I was 20, I think there's still hope for them.

Side note: my parallel parking job outside the tour site was perfect. Both wheels were millimeters from the curb and I slid right in there like butter. 

—5—

I've been playing around lately with the Benjamin Moore personal color viewer. You upload a picture of your room, outline the different areas to be painted, and then go to town seeing what it would look like in different shades.

It's time to repaint our living room, and I'm looking for something other than its current "boomer tan," as the kids would say. I don't really want to go gray because like every new build home in the country, because that's just going to be what the kids call "Millennial gray" in 10 years. But everything else seems either boring or too much.

On a plane last summer I watched a TV series about home design, and I've been thinking about making a mood board for my living room ever since to help me decide. Maybe I'll do that soon.

—6—

The windshield of the car recently developed a nasty crack that went alllllll the way across the windshield and splintered into a dozen branches at the end.

"I don't know what happened," the 16-year-old said, who was driving when it appeared. "All I did was turn on the defroster."

"I've never heard of that causing a windshield crack, and it's not even that cold out right now," I said.

"I looked it up and sometimes it does, especially if there's already a little crack and the defroster makes it spread," he answered.

That's when my 11-year-old confessed that his friend had hit it with a basketball the week before, and they didn't say anything about the crack because they didn't want to get in trouble. So he and I had a good talk about taking responsibility for mistakes. I explained that it was an important thing for Dad and I to know, and I was disappointed that he didn't tell us when he knew he should have.

A few days later, I followed up. "Remember the basketball thing, and how you said you didn't tell us because you were worried about getting in 'big trouble'?"

"Yeah."

"So what happened when you told us? Did you get in trouble?"

"Sort of," he said. "I mean, not for the basketball, but I did get in trouble for not telling you."

So I either taught him that honesty is the best policy, or I taught him that he should hide his mistakes better. I guess we'll find out in the coming years.

—7—

I'm looking forward to general conference this Saturday and Sunday. I keep feeling like the world is going too fast, and I'm excited to opt out of it this weekend to sit down and focus on encouraging words from God. 

General conference is like a weekend of TED talks from the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but everyone is invited and it would probably be worthwhile to anyone who is at least quasi-interested in spirituality or self-improvement. There's more information about it here if that sounds like it might be you.

Talks are given live on YouTube or the church's website from 12-2pm and 4-6pm EST on Saturday and Sunday, with more from 8-9:30pm EST on Saturday. (Don't forget to bring your snacks!)

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7 Quick Takes about Bedsheet Drama, One Allergist's Opinion, and the Great Seasonal Changeover

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

For the past several years, people who come to visit us have been kind enough to sleep on a mattress on the floor in our partially finished basement, which is basically one step up from couchsurfing in college. But I'm pleased to announce that we now have a fully functional guest bed!

We moved the mattress upstairs and I scored a great deal on a bed frame and a box spring for it on Facebook Marketplace. I was really proud of myself. 

And this isn't a sponsored post or anything, but let me say how much I love Facebook Marketplace. Our dishwasher, fridge, and microwave are all from there (and they've lasted longer than the brand new appliances they replaced). Even the last car we bought was from Facebook Marketplace, and we got a nice deal on it, too. 

—2—

I guess it's a generational thing, but young people just don't use a flat sheet under their blanket anymore. I've begged my kids for years to start using one, because I think it's frankly disgusting not to have a sheet as a barrier between you and the comforter. After all, sheets are easy to wash frequently and comforters are not.

But the kids resisted my attempts to domesticate them, and I started questioning whether this was really the hill I wanted to die on. I quietly admitted defeat, and tried not to think about it too much or I would throw up in my mouth.

Until I got up one morning to find one of the kids sleeping on the guest bed from Take #1. I hadn't yet outfitted the bed with sheets, so they'd dragged their comforter over and were sleeping ON THE BARE MATTRESS without a top or bottom sheet! I lost it and we had a family meeting that night.

I clearly outlined 4 facts for the kids:

1. The average person sweats 6.5 ounces every night.
2. Their large comforters cannot fit in our old-style washing machine.
3. The high-capacity washers at the laundromat cost $8.25 per load.
4. They can either start using a flat sheet under their comforter, or I will start driving them to the laundromat twice a month so they can wash their comforters with their own money.

They're all using top sheets now.

—3—

I saw this online and laughed because this has literally happened to us. 

Phillip and I must have been parents longer than this guy, though, because when our kids lost the remote we didn't even bother looking. We knew they'd just lose it again immediately.

The remote was missing for months or maybe even years, until one day we were moving the couches to the other side of the room and the remote fell out. We were pretty excited to have it back again, but it disappeared within two days.

Guess how much time we're going to spend looking for it.

—4—

I've been concerned about my 10-year-old's growth for forever. Even though his pediatrician assures me he's small but within the range of normal, something seems weird to me about the way he can't put on weight and height even when he tries. Add to that how kids randomly complain about aches and pains and being tired, and I've gotten to wondering over the last few years if a food allergy could actually be to blame.

Now, I don't run my kids to the doctor about every little thing, but I finally decided to take him to an allergist and ask for a skin test. I didn't have an airtight reason to suspect a food allergy, but if we tested I could know once and for all and stop worrying about it.

The good news is, my son tested negative for all major food and environmental allergens. The bad news is that the allergist clearly thought I was an idiot for even coming in and made no real attempt to hide it.

Basically my conversation with the allergist in his office.

It was embarrassing, but whatever. At least my mind is at ease about the food allergies now.

—5—

Here's a fun video where kids talk to an ex-con. The kids roasted this guy without even meaning to. I'm surprised they didn't make him cry.

Apparently there's a whole "Kids Meet" series, and if you liked this one I recommend "Kids Meet a Plastic Surgeon" and "Kids Meet a Body Builder."

—6—

My 13-year-old usually gets up before me on weekdays for school, but one morning I woke up to find her collapsed on the couch wrapped in a blanket. 

When I shook her shoulder, her eyes fluttered open. They focused on me, but they held zero hints that she had any comprehension of who or where she was. "What the freak?" she finally squeaked in a falsetto whisper. "I woke up at 6, what happened?"

The night before, she and I had been watching some funny videos of people waking up from anesthesia high as a kite, and she actually reminded me of them.

My oldest two have had their wisdom teeth out and were both disappointingly lucid when waking up, but maybe for this child I'll get it on video just in case.

—7—

Right now I'm in the middle of switching over my kids' clothes for the season, which sounds like an easy job unless you've done it before and then you know better. 

It sounds easy: just swap the winter wardrobe for the summer wardrobe. It should take 15 minutes, tops. But the system quickly starts to break down. You can't do that, because kids will still need some warm clothes, even in the summer. After debating over how much to leave out, you start sorting the rest into piles: donate, keep for wearing next year, toss because they have holes or stains... before you know it, you're sitting on the floor surrounded by piles going, "Wait, which pile is which again? Why does my son have 3 million T-shirts and only 2 pairs of pants? No wonder he can't close his dresser. Ugh, I can't believe he never even wore this sweater, that was expensive!"

The best part is how you do all that work, and then for months afterward your kid keeps wearing a pair of highwater pants that snuck past you in the dirty laundry while you were in their room having a midlife crisis sifting through it all.

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7 Quick Takes about Keeping Our Mouths Shut, Counting to 1,800 Every Day, and Inspirational Art

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It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

 

—1—

There's a gorgeous hike a few hours from us, and I just found out that it's also a beautiful place to go in the winter.

I actually like it more because there are no crowds and you don't have to pay to park.

Temperatures were above freezing, but still cold enough that it was a real problem when somehow the 10-year-old got water in both boots halfway through. Luckily, I was wearing two pairs of socks, so he replaced his wet socks with my extra pair and then slid his feet into empty Ziploc bags from the trail mix we'd brought with us before putting his wet boots back on. It worked well enough to keep them dry until we got back to the car. 

—2—

At one of the frozen falls, we stopped to watch an ice climber pickaxing his way up the cliffs. We don't know anything about ice climbing, but I asked Phillip, "Do you think we should start yelling tips to him?"

Phillip shrugged. "It's not like he can stop us."

Don't worry, we didn't say anything.

The scenic overlooks had guardrails at the edges, and like usual most of them were covered in "Justin + Kim 7-6-22" and "Jack was here" type graffiti. 

But this one in particular caught my eye:

I realize it was probably the work of a kid with a crush on his fourth grade teacher, but I prefer to think that Mrs. Corbett took her class on a field trip and just couldn't contain her rebellious streak.

—3—

Honestly, other than the winter hike which was nice, it's been a tough week. Phillip was gone for most of it on a work trip. I'm struggling with crippling inadequacy as it relates to my calling at church, kicking myself over a parenting decision I wish I'd made, tried and failed to help a friend with a project, and my 3rd grader's music class started learning to play the recorder. Basically, I want to crawl under a rock.

ANYWAY.

The kids have been super-helpful, both in terms of cooking dinner and giving hugs, and I appreciate that. Things will be fine, but I'm not sad to leave this week behind and start over again next week.

—4—

When my son was 5 years old, I started to get worried about his growth curve. We started counting calories, got special eating reward plates, and made him eat more at mealtimes, and he jumped way up on the charts. Of course, we got more and more lax over the years, and something keeps nagging at me again to start paying attention to it.

So guess what's back?

1,800 calories fills up the thermometer; 200 more earns a bonus of 10 extra minutes of screen time the next day.

We used a variation of this chart back when he was 5, but now that he's old enough to check the nutrition label (or Google "how many calories is in a banana?") and mark the chart himself, the user experience is way different.

—5—

For you, what is the worst part of grocery shopping? Is it finding all the items to put in the cart? Unloading them at the register? Unloading them into the car? For me, the most tiring part is carrying the bags into the house.

But I discovered something brilliant: the four kids and I can make a line all the way from the car to the kitchen counter, pass the bags down the line, and have everything inside in less than 30 seconds.

I'm trying to time my grocery shopping trips to end on Tuesdays when they get home from school, so hopefully the bucket brigade will become a regular thing.

—6—

I started listening to a new Spanish language learning podcast. It's for intermediate learners and I definitely don't catch everything, but I know I'm improving because (1) I can get the gist of what's being said and (2) my brain still feels okay after listening to a few episodes in a row. 

Really, it used to be that after 15 minutes of trying to understand spoken Spanish I would get sleepy or feel like I needed to zone out and go to the fifth dimension for a while.

I think this is a good sign. 

—7—

I made these inspirational art pieces with the girls at church this week, aren't they cute?

We combined this tutorial with this one, and it was a really easy project that turned out looking nice! Just make sure to use heavier paper like cardstock or artist's sketchbook paper, but all the other supplies you have at home already.

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7 Quick Takes about Jane Austen, Aiming for Sixth Place, and Buying Cereal in Bulk

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I overheard a conversation between my kids in the backseat of the car.

"The forest near our house used to seem so big," the 10-year-old said, "but now that I'm older I realize it's really small!"

The 8-year-old said "That's because you've become—"

I thought he was going to say 'older,' 'wiser,' or 'more mature,' but then he said: "Fat."

—2—

I've been struggling with the daylight savings time change, and I guess with sleeping in general. I just can't seem to get caught up on sleep, and for one reason or another I'm up too late every night or up too early every morning. Sometimes both.

I'm in such a sleep deficit that my usual YouTube sleep meditations (I like Jason Stephenson in English and Zentopía in Spanish) haven't been working that well, so lately I’ve been listening to a British guy on barbiturates read Pride and Prejudice with rain sounds in the background. 

Every night I just skip back to the last part I remember hearing and continue with the story. It either works fantastically at putting me to sleep, or I spend time with a classic novel I know all about but have never actually read before. So it's a win-win. 

—3—

My daughter was wondering whether anyone has ever remembered their own birth and decided to google her question.

Google autocomplete gave her these suggested searches she might be interested in:

Everything we ever wanted to know about dying is right here, but unfortunately that's not the information we're looking for.

—4—

Our 8-year-old gymnast gets to compete in the Men's State Championship! Typically, States are held over the weekend and my son's level/age group competes on Sunday, which he forfeits for religious reasons. This year, he's scheduled to compete on Saturday, which we're all thrilled about, but I thought the schedule looked a little suspicious. I asked the coach of his new gym if she had anything to do with it and she said, "I made some requests."

She also explained to me that if his performance at States qualifies him for Regionals, his level will also be competing on Saturday. UNLESS he is in the top 5 gymnasts in his division in the state, in which case he would be scheduled on Sunday and therefore have to drop out.

On the way home from gymnastics practice I explained this to my son and he said, "So I should try to do good but not too good?" A certain scene from The Incredibles comes to mind here:

—5—

I passed some employees in the grocery store using shopping carts to move around Kellogg's promo displays that looked like giant boxes of cereal. 

Or maybe this is just a mom of teenagers making a midweek Costco run. Hard to say.

It was a hilarious sight, and it was even more hilarious because they didn't seem to think it was hilarious. It was just a normal Tuesday.

—6—

Basement finishing update: we have officially applied polyurethane to and sanded the stair treads and risers!

By "we," I mean Phillip. I helped with this for 5 minutes.

That night I went to a welcome home party for a friend's returned missionary daughter, where I was talking to someone else I know who is also finishing her basement. After chatting for a while about our progress, I said "we both keep saying 'we', but 'we' is our husbands, correct?"

"Correct," she said. And then we kept talking about what 'we' were planning to do next. Don't hate us, every project needs a project manager. It's called teamwork.

—7—

To make sure I wasn't a bot, a box popped up on the ChatGPT site that said "Are you human?" 

The irony.

"Yes, are you?" I muttered as I completed the stupid Captcha puzzle so a robot could decide whether I was not-robot enough to talk to it.

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7 Quick Takes about Answering Philosophical Questions, and Digitizing the Past One Page at a Time

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

My high schooler was supposed to pick up his sister from middle school, but he forgot. When I finally arrived home and realized she wasn't there and went to go pick her up myself, she wasn't too happy.

He apologized for not coming to get her (apparently he'd set an alarm on his watch but accidentally set it for the wrong time) and asked what she was doing that whole time she was waiting.

"Pondering the mysteries of the universe, probably," I said helpfully.

"I did!" She cried. "I sat there for so long I figured out the answer to the question 'to be or not to be.' After 35 minutes, I decided the answer was 'NOT  TO BE!'"

—2—

Over the summer I took a break from my language exchange app, where I talk with Spanish speakers learning English, and never started up again in the fall. 

This week I jumped back on it and had a short conversation. I feel a little out of practice but I didn’t say anything stupid (at least not egregiously stupid enough for Luis to correct me on), so that's something.

—3—

Someone brought the toy train set down from the attic to use for a school project (something about a Rube Goldberg machine) and now the younger boys have been playing with it.

"How sweet that they're not too old for trains yet," I thought, but as I went down to watch them play I noticed it wasn't like when they were toddlers. The goal here was to recreate as many accident scenes as they could think of.

Still a work in progress. More wreckage to come.

—4—

My 11-year-old brought home slime from school. Slime. 

As much as I wanted to rip that Ziploc baggie from his hands and throw it out the window like a live grenade, I tried to be a fun mom. A supportive mom. I said he could keep it as long as it stayed in the kitchen and dining room, where there's no carpet and very little upholstered furniture to destroy.

Of course, then he had to push it, and could he puhleeeeeaaaase take it up on the balcony in the living room to see if it could stretch all the way down to the first floor? Yes he could, I said, because I'm an idiot.

I should've known right about now that this wasn't going to end well.

By the next day, I was cleaning slime out of the carpet and thinking of that scene in The Little Mermaid where King Triton says "I consider myself a reasonable merman" and ends up destroying Ariel's secret grotto.

—4—

Phillip and I haven't gone out on a date in a while, so earlier this week we dropped off our son at gymnastics, then walked around the mall together and each bought a pair of workout pants. It was everything you'd expect from a date in a 21-year-old marriage.

We were in Burlington looking at the home decor (note to self: if you're looking for a plant stand, go to Burlington; I've never seen so many plant stands in one place in my life) and I saw an Easter door hanging that I kind of liked. This isn't the actual one I saw, but I found a similar picture online:

Since last year, I've been upgrading our Easter decor to reflect our focus on Jesus during the Easter season and thought this might be a nice addition to the front door. "Do you like this?" I asked Phillip.

His response was a resounding NO. "It's got Easter eggs on it, that's weird."

"Weird? Why? People mix secular and religious traditions for holidays all the time."

"But not in the same decoration! That's like a Nativity set with Santa's elves in it."

I guess he might have a point, but I was too distracted by the image of Buddy the Elf next to Mary and Joseph to say so.

—6—

When my oldest kids were little I spent hundreds of hours making them gorgeous baby scrapbooks. I pictured flipping through them as a family to relive old memories, and then they would go on to be treasured by each kid's future spouse and children.

Well.

Fast-forward a decade or more, and the glue has lost its tackiness. The fragile scrapbooks are sadly not headed toward becoming forever keepsakes, they are headed for the garbage. When I first realized this was happening, I was super-sad. If the physical pages weren't going to last, I at least needed to digitize these things but it felt too overwhelming to start. 

Encouraged by my ever-positive 13-year-old ("You can do it, Mom! Just do three pages a day and you'll get through them!") I began the slow, painstaking process of removing each page, taking its picture, and uploading it to the cloud so it can still live on in some format.

Maybe once I have the pages all digitally copied, I'll feel okay with setting the physical books out and letting the kids leaf through them until they really do fall apart. Because one thing I've realized in my journey to becoming a minimalist is that if I hide things away to preserve their specialness, not only will I never get to use them but they'll also never carry special memories for the kids so they won't want them after I'm gone. Special things were meant to be used, even if that means using them to death.

—7—

The world is so big, but in some ways it's also kind of small. Isn't it weird that the airport lady's voice is the same lady in so many places all over the world? 

She seems like a delightful person.

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7 Quick Takes about Getting Personal with AI, Heartfelt Poetry, and Mario Lopez and the Demise of a Generation

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Lately, I've been using ChatGPT to help me write texts and emails where I need to word things delicately but I don't know exactly how to say it. So I'll explain the situation and AI usually gives me a pretty good first draft to work with.

Now I know it's not rude to walk away from a robot without ending the conversation politely but it still feels like it, so the last time it gave me advice I responded with "Great, thanks."

ChatGPT wrote back and said, "You're welcome! I hope the conversation goes as smoothly as possible. 💙" I thought the heart emoji was a nice touch.

—2—

My 3rd grader brought home an acrostic poem from school that he wrote on Valentine's Day. 

"Very nice," I said. "Who did you write it for?"

He shrugged. "Just... anybody."

I love the spelling, but not as much as I love the inclusion of the word "nonetheless."

So you know, just an all-purpose, non-specific poem meant for literally anyone who can read on Valentine's Day. Hallmark, if you're interested in using this, call us.

—3—

One night I put on a YouTube video while getting ready for bed, when an ad interrupted my video that almost made me bite my toothbrush in half. 

NOOOOOO!! Not Mario Lopez doing an AARP ad! 

I watched him play a teenager on TV. In fact, I was a teenager when I watched him play a teenager on TV... which means that AARP is coming for me soon, too.

—4—

The YouTube algorithm also showed me a video about what to do when you feel overwhelmed and your family isn't helping out enough at home. I wonder why it thought I needed to see that? (Joking, we're actually in a season of life where I'm really happy with how everyone is pitching in at home, fingers crossed.)

You don't need to watch the entirety of the video but I did want to highlight the part from 11:30 to 11:55.

Not only was that little snippet funny to rewatch a few times, it was probably also the only part of the video I 100% agreed with. If you feel like the maid, the key is talking to your family before you're pushed to the point of doing whatever that thing is at 11:49 (which I've 100% done before and trust me, it doesn't work well at all).

—5—

I read an interesting magazine article about digital distraction. Since everything needs a reboot right now, recently someone redid the 1970 Stanford marshmallow experiment, but this time using iPads instead of marshmallows (if the 4-year-olds could wait for 5 minutes, they got 10 minutes of screen time.)

I really wish my kids were younger so I could repeat the experiment at home and see what happens, because the study concluded that the biggest determinant of whether or not the kids could wait was their parents' use of their own phones. Kids who were able to wait had parents who used their phones as tools to complete specific objectives rather than as portable entertainment devices.

Which probably means my kids would totally fail, since 2 of my 7 Quick Takes this week involve watching YouTube.

Illustration from the article. (I've met teenagers who would absolutely glue their phones to their faces if they could.)

—6—

Remember last week, when I said we were really unhappy with our car dealership? They misdiagnosed an issue during some repairs this summer, and it wasn't until Phillip took two days off work last week to dismantle the engine himself to find what the problem was: the dealership had forgotten to reconnect a sensor during a previous repair.

In other words, they messed up big time, and Phillip had take two days off of work to monkey with the car to figure that out. In taking apart the engine, he'd essentially redone most of the work they'd charged us for earlier... so what had we paid them for, exactly?

This morning we went to the dealership, explained our position, and got a refund of $964 for the original labor! That was what we'd been hoping for, but I can't believe it actually worked.

—7—

In related news, our 18-year-old visited a dentist while she's away at college and was told she has a cracked filling that needs to be repaired. 

I contacted her home dentist because I want to make sure I'm correct before I fly off the handle, but I'm fairly certain it's a filling they just did 6 months ago. I'm waiting to hear back from them; more news at 11.

Do you think this could possibly have as good of a resolution as the situation with the car dealership?

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7 Quick Takes about Sledding Dangerously, Books That I Probably Won't Miss Not Reading, and the Plus Side of Slippery Driveways

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

One day I decided to take the kids sledding, and after much discussion we settled on a local hill nearby. Two of the kids wanted to go to a bigger, better hill that was farther away, but I explained that it had been melting and freezing a lot, and the big hill might be too icy.

“Besides, I want to check out the snow conditions at this hill," I said. "We're hoping to take the Young Women (church youth group) sledding here tomorrow and I want to make sure it's safe first."

“The Young Men never would think to do that beforehand,” my 16-year-old son mused. “I guess that’s why girls live longer than boys.”

Sister watching as son goes flying off his sled over a jump. Another reason why girls live longer.

—2—

This week a movie theater was playing Looney Tunes cartoons from the 1960s, and since my dad and stepmom are here visiting I thought they’d like watching their childhood shows on the big screen.

I've never seen so many characters shot by cannons and blown up by TNT in my entire life as I did in that 70 minutes. I guess I’m used to all the social-emotional learning they put in kids’ programming today, and trust me, there was none of that to be found here.

There was a preschooler there who belly-laughed through the entire thing, and it was too pure. I think everyone in the theater had a better time because of that kid.

—3—

With a little time to kill, I decided to pop into a nearby bookstore to browse. While I was looking around, I noticed that the "paranormal romance" section of the store was WAY too big for how many books should have been in that genre. What in the world, I wondered, could possibly be filling the shelves? 

I took a cursory survey of the covers: there were the usual vampires and werewolves, but on further examination I also found a merman, a Minotaur, and even a "humanoid spider." I'm sure all of them were wonderful works of literature that would've inspired, challenged, and changed me for the better, but I was just there to look and not to buy, so I guess I'll never know.

—4—

My dad was quizzing my kids on collective nouns for different types of animals. You know, like a pod of whales, a gaggle of geese, a parliament of owls, that kind of thing.

But I liked some that my kids made up better than the real ones. 

When my dad said "alligators" they guessed "chomp." And when he said "giraffes," they guessed "forest." I think those were pretty good.

—5—

Due to all the melting and re-freezing I mentioned in Take #1, our driveway is a thick sheet of ice. But with how weird the weather is, it will probably be 50 degrees next week, and I don't want to pay for ice melt when the sun will eventually do it for free.

In the meantime, it's not so bad. In fact, the other day I had some heavy packages to bring in so I just set them on the ground and kicked them to the front door. It was faster and easier than carrying them in would have been.

I should probably put up a danger sign to warn delivery drivers, though.

—6—

I completely forgot our annual Valentine's Day love bomb tradition last week, so I've been working on it all this week (because better late than never.) If you don't want to click the link, the quick summary is that every member of the family writes a love letter to every other member of the family. You can imagine that it takes a while.

But it's a lot less painful now that even the youngest kids are old enough to do theirs by themselves and keep track of who they still need to write to. When they were little, I literally had to walk around with a clipboard and spreadsheet to make sure they all got done.

—7—

Phillip took several days off work this week to work on our van and save us thousands of dollars. Actually, he saved us from buying an entirely new vehicle, because the dealer told us in June that it would be better financially speaking to trade in the van and buy a new one.

Smiling to humor me. He's amazing.

Now all we need to do is follow up with the dealer, because we have a major beef with them. The "problem" that we were told was going to be a major fix ended up being simply that THE DEALER FORGOT TO CONNECT A SENSOR LAST TIME THEY WORKED ON THE CAR. Once Phillip got the engine taken apart and connected it, the problem was solved.

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