7 Quick Takes about Invisible Labor, skipping School But Not for Real, and Using K-pop for Evil

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

—1—

Well, my favorite Sunday of the year just happened, Primary Program Sunday. The Primary is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' children's organization, and once a year the kids run the Sunday church service singing all the songs they've learned throughout the year and delivering short speaking parts on gospel principles. 

My favorite song in the Primary program was this one. I will preface this by saying I'm not a huge fan of recordings of kids singing for the same reason I get creeped out by pictures of certain aging celebrities (too much autotune/plastic surgery generally makes things worse, not better), but if you can imagine this song sung by a group of regular, average children it's really quite beautiful:

—2—

Phillip and I are currently adjusting our division of household labor. It's a tricky balance. After all, my full-time job is literally home- and kid-related tasks. But there are two of us, and more than 40 hours a week of home- and kid-related tasks. Most of our responsibilities just fell to one or the other of us without a conscious decision, so maybe it's time to change some things up. 

To help, we're using this process and are currently on Step 3:

Step 1: Have a big fight about who does what around here.

Step 2: Agree to focus on the future. Make a spreadsheet of everything that goes into running the family, from sorting the mail to maintaining the cars. Try not to bring up who currently does each one. (Stuff a rag in your mouth if necessary.)

Step 3: Go through the list and spell out exactly what each task entails, including simply noticing that it needs to be done. Ours is really specific. "Notice when the lawn needs to be mowed" means wildly different things to each of us, so we established a maximum allowable height for the grass. For other things, we said things like "take the trash to the dump every Saturday" or "mail out Christmas cards by December 20."

Step 4: Separately, each of us will go down the spreadsheet and rate each task as either 

• Want It
• Don't Want It
• No Preference

Step 5: Divvy out each responsibility on the spreadsheet. Some will be easy decisions, because one of us will want it and the other one won't, and for the rest, we'll hopefully figure out what makes the most sense.

Step 6: Try it for a week. The important part is: no reminding or having anything to do with the other person's responsibilities. If I don't own a chore, it ceases to exist to me. We'll review the chores at the end of the week and hopefully it can't get too bad before then.

We borrowed some of these ideas from a 2019 book called Fair Play, and some of them we thought of on our own. Hopefully it will help us both feel better about how we're doing life together.

—3—

And while I'm on the rampage about household chores, I'm also doubling down on the kids about owning their responsibilities. 

Nominally, they do their laundry. But half the time that means I have to tell them when it's time to do laundry, remind them to switch it to the dryer, take it out of the dryer for them, then trip over the basket in the hallway for two days until I tell them to take it upstairs and put it away. I told them that for every step I have to remind them about or do myself, they owe me $5 or five extra household chores. I'm done messing around.

With Christmas coming up, I also want to outsource more of the magic-making to the 4 kids who still live at home so it's not just me. Each of them picked one of our family Christmas traditions to be in charge of, and I think they'll rise to the occasion. Because making plans for which Christmas movies to watch is more motivating than doing their laundry.

—4—

My daughter was sick this week, so I had to call the school attendance line. But according to the recording at the beginning, the school now prefers you to email instead of leaving a voice message.

So I hung up and attempted to do that, not realizing how hard it would be to write this without sounding like a kid hacking their parents' email to skip shool.

My first attempt:

Hi, 

My daughter ___________ won't be in school today. She is sick.

Thanks,

Jenny Evans

Writing this was the email equivalent leaving a store without buying anything. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but it felt like I definitely was.

The whole thing sounded like a badly-worded forgery, but what could I improve? "Hi" sounds like a kid, but "hello" just sounds like a kid trying to sound like an adult. No salutation sounds rude, and also like a kid.

Do I need to specify "my daughter so-and-so"? If I don't, it sounds like the kid is writing it. If I do, then it also sounds like the kid is writing it, because my name is already on the email and of course she's my daughter.

In the end, I never did figure out how to rewrite the email to make it sound legit, so I just sent it off and tried not to think about how it looked like it was from three kids in a trenchcoat pretending to be an adult. 

—5—

The 9-year-old was emptying his papers from school. Among them was a drawing of a fall leaf with this text at the bottom:

The time is autumn

Because of that, the leaves fall

Blown around by wind. 

 

"Is this a haiku?" I asked.

"Yeah, and it's a really good one."

"What do you like about it?"

"I don't know. I don't remember what it says, but I know it's good."

Look out, Walt Whitman!

So... I kind of already knew this, but I don't think we'll need to worry about this kid's self-confidence very much.

—6—

While my middle schooler and I were waiting in the pickup line for her high school brother, the song "Golden" from K-pop Demon Hunters came on the radio. She joked about embarrassing her brother by blasting it as we rolled up to the school in front of all his friends, but apparently she didn't expect me to follow through.

Because when I rolled down the windows and cranked the music up, she turned white as a sheet and hit the floor of the van so no one could see her.

My son, on the other hand, thought it was funny. 

—7—

I'm not a big social media user, but this was an amazing video about really any habitual time-waster and some new ways to think about it.

At the 3-minute mark, my 11-year-old thanked me for not getting him a phone. I'm going to need that in writing.

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7 Quick Takes about Deserted Islands, Being Amused by 5-Year-Olds, and All the Pants

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

—1—

The 14-year-old has been claiming that she's not hungry at mealtimes, but I've been paying attention and it's only until something with a higher sugar content appears that she magically feels like eating.

"You, my dear, are addicted to sugar," I told her, watching her turn up her nose at another healthy dinner to help herself to a glass of milk and a bakery muffin. "I think we need to send you off to live on a deserted island until you get over it."

Her 17-year-old brother looked up and said, "She's like, 'Mmm... desserts...'"

That's probably exactly what she was thinking, too.

—2—

My mom and I picked up some jigsaw puzzles from the take-one-leave-one table at the public library to do while she visits. They were unexpectedly hard. 

Spurred by this puzzle of The Mandalorian, the conversation turned to Pedro Pascal and how weird it was to see him in another role in a different movie or show.

"Pedro Pascal? Who's that?" One of my kids asked.

"He's a famous actor," I said.

"Are you a famous actor?" my daughter asked, being goofy.

"Yes, I act like I enjoy making lunch and dinner every day."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "It's not very believable."

—3—

I got a new calling at church after having been released as Young Women president. I'm now the secretary in the Primary presidency, the children's organization! I loooooove working with those little kids ages 3 to 11, and it's been a really long time since I had a Primary calling.

On my first Sunday, I subbed for the 5-year-olds' class and it was everything I wanted it to be. We played a matching game, I got at least three completely irrelevant and off-the-wall stories in answer to a simple question, and when I was helping a child learn the words of a song and whispered "This is my sacred duty" he laughed and told me "You said 'doody'."

Absolute perfection. This Sunday is the Primary program, and I simply cannot wait.

—4—

My 14-year-old is super excited to get her first job. She applied at a grocery store and is going to start in a few weeks! She's beyond thrilled to serve the public with a smile make her own spending money so she can order something other than a free tapwater when she hangs out at Dunkin' Donuts with her friends.

We had to go find her social security card and she was confused at why it was printed on such flimsy paper, which reminded me of this comedy bit I saw on a Facebook reel:

I pulled up the reel to write this blog post and then got distracted by other chores, so it just played on loop for two hours until I came back. I'm sure the algorithm thinks I LOVE this comedian now. My feed will be nothing but this guy tomorrow.

—5—

It's getting seriously hard to find human-sized pants that will fit my 17-year-old. He's as tall as his dad and even slimmer, and we have a hard enough time buying pants for his dad already. 

We tried ordering a few things online with mixed success, so I asked him if he wanted to go shopping in some brick-and-mortar stores, like a boomer. He was doubtful they'd carry his size but went anyway.

Why do department stores have a "Big and Tall" section? I feel like I see way more guys that are either big OR tall, but not as many who are both. I'm convinced that "Big and Tall" is just a euphemism, anyway, because we saw a pair of 54x30s in there which is big with no tall at all.

However, I need to give a massive shout-out to JCPenney. They had multiple pairs of 30x34 pants in stock and I have never even seen one in the store, letalone several!  

—6—

Speaking of pants, my 14-year-old has been asking for a pair of running leggings. It's getting too cold for shorts and sweatpants bother her. 

Full disclosure on leggings: I hate them. Exercise ones are the worst, too. Do we really need to run looking like we just stripped naked and painted our legs a different color? And they are so thin, they leave literally nothing to the imagination. I don't even want to know how/if people are wearing underwear under those things, you can see every dimple from outer space so I don't even want to know.

Anyway, I told my daughter she could order the running leggings she wanted at Target and I'd pick them up, but if they were too skin tight we'd have to return them. 

What do you think? Too tight?

It turns out she accidentally ordered a child's size 4/5, so back to the store they go.

—7—

We're still working on getting the right color stain to finish the sliding door we had replaced in July (see the above picture for the unfinished door.) 

We've accepted our home for what it is, and what it is is a product of the 1990s honey oak craze. So we're going to stain the trim around the doors to match the rest of the honey oak in the house but that's proving a little tricky. We just can't find the right color match.

I'm going back to the store tomorrow for Try #3, and if that's not right I'm just going to mix a few of the closest ones together and call it a day. 

Because nobody has time to get it perfect, especially when perfect means neon orange.

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7 Quick Takes about the Trick Part of Trick-or-Treat, Trying Not to Anthropomorphize, and Reading in Spanish

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

—1—

This year for Halloween, my 14-year-old decided to get serious about trick-or-treating and brought home 467 pieces of candy.

Yes, you read that right. She organized her hoard into 5 separate gallon-sized Ziploc bags by category: chocolate and peanut butter, regular chocolate, fruity candy, gummies, and snacks like little bags of pretzels or chips. Our kitchen counter looks like the candy aisle of a Kroger.

I have noticed, however, that with the cocoa shortages and tariffs and general inflation, fun-sized candy bars are getting slightly smaller. I often see articles like "Why Gen Z Won't Make More Than Previous Generations," which made me think of a really good headline for The Onion: "Today's Trick-or-Treaters Have to Work Harder Than Their Parents."

It's rough out there.

—2—

On Halloween, the kids in our family all went their separate ways and did their own things.

The 14-year-old had a themed costume with her friends. They had cowboy boots and hats, but they also wore cow footie pajamas with tails, so they were either cowgirls or girl cows. I think you might have to be 14 to completely get it.

The 11-year-old joined a neighbor friend and went as a mad scientist (we've definitely gotten our money's worth out of these costume steampunk goggles) and my 9-year-old went with a different friend group as a duck.

And the 17-year-old totaled the car.

Everyone was okay, except the car of course.

Most importantly, everybody in both cars involved was completely okay. My son was driving his sister to her friend's house for trick-or-treating when the teenagers in front of him slammed on the brakes. My son couldn't stop fast enough and plowed into them. 

Yes, he hit a BMW. I don't want to talk about it.

The front of the car did exactly what it's supposed to do and crumpled to absorb all the impact so neither of them were hurt. And it was another random small blessing that just after I got there, my ministering sister from church happened to drive past and ended up taking my daughter to her Halloween party so she wasn't even that late.

—3—

So all of a sudden, there's no vehicle for my son to drive himself to school or work or anywhere else. Not only that, but he also can't help out by driving his siblings to their activities, either, which I've really come to depend on.

But I can't exactly complain about how hard my life is without a third car. Like, boo-hoo, why don't I just get on my yacht and have a good cry about it? We have a lot to be thankful for.

It's logistically complicated, but we're figuring it out one day at a time. For now, my kids who need rides are — as the lady who interrupts your hold music says — currently experiencing longer wait times than normal. 

—4—

The accident happened on Friday evening, and in the chaos both kids left their backpacks in the car when it was towed to the towyard, which is closed on weekends. So they both had to go to school with nothing on Monday morning until I could get over there to retrieve their stuff.

After it opened I went over and got the backpacks, took everything out of the glove compartment and the trunk, and searched under the seats for library books and water bottles. And then I took one last look at our smashed little car (why, oh why do the headlights have to look like sad eyes??) and left it there.

For the rest of the week, I got a little misty-eyed every time I passed a double-decker trailer full of totaled cars on the freeway.

—5—

My 17-year-old has been working really hard on his college essays. He's been making daily and weekly goals to stay on track and get everything done in time for one school's early decision date, but he told me, "I hate self-imposed deadlines. Because I know the guy who set it, and he has no idea what he's doing!"

So far, though, he's in pretty good shape. When they were his age, both of his older sisters stayed home from school frantically finishing their essays on the day their applications were due.

—6—

After almost 5 years of learning Spanish, I'm still not sure that I'm much better at conversation (to be fair, I'm a below-average English conversationalist, too) but my reading skills have definitely improved.

The first book in Spanish I read was a translation of a kids' graphic novel, then I graduated to a translation of a book from the YA section. And now I've just started my first adult novel!

Not a translation, it's originally written in Spanish so the grammar is really challenging.

Look at how thick this novel is! This is the real thing. It takes me half an hour to read 3-5 pages, so assuming that speed I'll owe $50 million in library late fees by the time I finish.

—7—

I've also been lifting weights with Kaleigh Cohen on YouTube since April, and not only am I proud to say I've put on 10 lbs of solid muscle and I can do squats holding a cinder block, it's actually functional (because how often do most people really need to squat cinder blocks?) 

This week I did a reorganization project that required moving around heavy boxes for an hour, and I felt NOTHING in my back afterward. In fact, I wasn't sore anywhere, at all. A year ago, just thinking about doing a project like that would have made my back hurt.

On a related note, here's an inspirational meme I saw on Facebook that made me laugh:

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7 Quick Takes about Saying Goodbye, Spaceships Bigger Than My House, and Flattery Getting You Everywhere In This House

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

—1—

I've known for a few months that it was going to happen, but on Sunday I was officially released from my calling as Young Women's president. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basically everything is done by volunteers, and for the last 3 years my volunteer job at church was leading the teenage girls' youth organization. It was a labor-intensive calling, for sure.

People think the most energy-consuming part is planning a constant cycle of youth lessons and activities — which does take a good chunk of time, but the real work of the calling is invisible. It's praying for and thinking of ways to help the kids who are having a hard time. It's fielding phone calls from worried parents or dropping everything to go visit one of the girls in the hospital. It's helping them write college essays, going to support them in their school plays or concerts, or reading their favorite YA book so I had something to talk to them about. I won't miss some of the busywork and the meetings, but I will definitely miss being part of these girls' lives.

When I told my daughter I was going to be released as Young Women's president, her response wasn't what I expected. I thought she might demand immediately to know who the next president would be, or maybe that she would be sad (or happy?) that I wasn't going to be the president anymore. But instead, she said, "You mean you're unemployed?" Then, realizing that she had a calling at church in her class presidency, she giggled, "I have a job and you don't!"

—2—

The 14-year-old has been relying on her brother to pick her up from cross-country practice, but recently he's either been late or forgotten.

One morning I noticed that she'd left this note on the fridge, hoping that someone (anyone!) would come get her on time that day. Kind of the equivalent of sending out a "help me" message in a bottle.

You can feel the desperation in the handwriting.

After the last time he forgot, I went to go pick up the 14-year-old  myself and she was venting to me in the car. Trying to empathize (and also diffuse the situation with humor), I told her, "You have my permission to hit him in the head with a frying pan."

"How would that solve my problem??" she cried. "I don't want to hit him with a frying pan, I just want him to pick me up!"

Well then, I guess someone in this car is more mature than me.

—3—

The 14-year-old recently read The Martian and was dying to watch the movie. So one night we put the younger kids to bed, got some of her Halloween candy, and watched it together on Netflix. 

I enjoyed the movie, and luckily my daughter knows me well enough to tell me at every suspenseful scene what the outcome is going to be so I don't have heart palpitations.

There's one intense scene where Matt Damon is stuck on Mars rationing his food and the NASA crew on earth is desperately calculating whether they can get more supplies to him before he starves to death, and it was at that moment that my daughter chose to wail "Oh no, I only have two Nerds gummies left!"

And that's all you need to know about kids and how they work.

—4—

The only thing I didn't like about The Martian  was the ridiculously huge, sleek interior of the spacecraft. It looked like a cruise ship instead of a spaceship, with an onboard gym the size of a Planet Fitness.

Seriously, I laughed out loud when I saw their ship's exercise area. There were two rowing machines. Two. The ship was designed for 6 astronauts, surely they could have worked out some kind of turn-taking system instead of SENDING A SECOND MACHINE TO SPACE WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

But if you can suspend disbelief and just make believe that's what real spacecrafts are like, the movie was great. It was just like watching Friends and pretending their place is an actual New York City apartment.

If you're interested, though, here's a video tour of the real International Space Station:

—5—

Phillip is back from a work trip he just took to India. He was jetlagged and didn't really enjoy the trip, and is glad to be home.

Here was the view from his hotel:

It's hard to see with the clouds, but that's the ocean beyond the buildings.

Did you know that India spans two time zones, but in order to put the whole country on the same time they compromised and are on the half hour between the two? 

Phillip would often call us at 4 AM when he couldn't sleep, which for us was the evening of the day before, so the kids were like "Dad, are you calling from the future? Tell us what's going to happen tomorrow."

Layover in the Doha, Qatar; looks like we should just go on vacation to the Doha airport sometime.

—6—

Tonight, my boys are going trick or treating with friends for the first time ever. In the past, we've always gone out as a family and it was a total party. We have 6 kids so we never needed to go with a group: we had three families' worth of kids!

But now that the oldest two have moved out and the teenagers have their own plans, it's only the two youngest boys who want to go trick-or-treating so we had to find other families to go with. Because going out with just the four of us last year was BORING. I'm sure they'll have a way better time this year with their friends.

—7—

The kids already have bags of candy from a church trunk-or-treat event last weekend, so I asked my 9-year-old, "Do you have a piece of candy you'd like to give me?"

He offered me a pack of gummies. Meh.

"Do you have any chocolate?" I asked.

He said he didn't have much chocolate left, but he rummaged around in his bag and found a Crunch bar. "You can have this," he said, offering it to me.

"Oh, that's okay," I said, waving it away. "Crunch bars are your favorite."

"You're my favorite," he answered.

When an audible awww escaped my lips, he grinned and said, "Yeah, that was a pretty good one."

I'm in trouble.

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7 Quick Takes about Choosing Late Rather than Never, Speaking Japanese Like a Caveman, and Unconventional Cheesecake Flavors

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

—1—

I saw the biggest rainbow on my way home today. It was so wide and bright.

My 13-year-old pointed out that in this picture, it looks like the SUV in front of me is driving up the rainbow. 

—2—

We did it! We finished both projects that I thought it was too late for us to do this fall. At least I think we did.

We put down grass seed on the barren part of our yard, although we'll see if it germinates. It may be too cold by this point in the fall, but at least we tried.

Before planting, Phillip wanted to go break up the ground a little so he went outside with a hoe. I watched him working for a while and said, "You look like a farmer."

"You look like a farmer's wife," he shot back. Touché.

—3—

The other project was painting the front door. I took so long to choose a paint color, sand the door, and prime it, that I thought it was too late to paint it. But I decided that sometimes you've just got to forge ahead or it never gets done, and this was one of those times.

I won't lie, it was cold in the house with the door standing open while the paint dried (taping plastic over the doorframe helped.) We probably paid a little more to heat the house that day than if I'd had my act together and done this a month ago, but oh well. I love how it turned out so much that I'm still glad I did it.

A board for the new decking is at the bottom for illustrative purposes.

I plan to touch up the sidelights in the spring, at least the white parts. As for the gold in the middle? My decorating strategy is to pretend they don't look like that.

—4—

After painting the door and putting the knobs back on, I realized that we also needed to replace the broken doorbell to the right of the door.

I started to search for new hardware on Amazon, but the auto-fill results looked weird. I was confused until I realized that our browser's profanity filter was on.

Protecting our kids from exposure to inappropriate online doorbell descriptions.

—5—

I was so on top of my game this year that I was about to order Christmas cards. Before Thanksgiving! Before Halloween, even! But it wasn't meant to be.

I looked through all of our photos and I couldn't find the family picture, even though I distinctly remember taking it this summer and specifically thinking "this will be a nice picture for the Christmas card!" Several children corroborated my memory so I know I'm not just making it up, but the photo completely vanished, and now two of my kids have left the state so we can't take another one.

So I'm not sending out Christmas cards this year out of protest. They're expensive, anyway.

—6—

When I was volunteering at the temple on Wednesday, a Japanese-speaking sister came in who didn't speak any English. We have language translating headsets in the temple, but every language is on a different channel and I had to tell her which one.

I took 4 semesters of Japanese in college so you'd think that would not be a problem for me. Unfortunately, if you don't use it you lose it and I don't remember hardly anything. All I could say as I handed her the headset was "Nihongo, go" (Japanese, 5.) 

Yes, I really did spend hundreds of dollars to learn that.

—7—

At the request of one of the kids, Phillip made a pumpkin cheesecake. It was delicious, but somehow, a massive crack appeared on top while it was in the oven.

He was disappointed but the 13-year old told him "That's okay, my favorite flavor is crack."

"There are only two interpretations of that," he replied, "and neither one of them is good."

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7 Quick Takes about Internet Safety Tips from a 4th Grader, Interior Decorating, and Benign Neglect When It Comes to Gardening

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

—1—

What do your kids want to be for Halloween? My 9-year-old said he wanted to be a duck, so I picked up my phone to do a cursory Google search for "DIY duck costume" to get ideas.

In my hurry, though, I misspelled "duck" and accidentally hit the 'f' key instead of the 'd.' My 9-year-old gave me the side eye and quietly advised, "I don't think you want to search that up."

—2—

Phillip has been up to his eyeballs in work stuff as they're either rounding out or beginning a new fiscal year (I forget which.) He's been drowning in work and lately had to travel for a meeting that involved taking an Uber to the train station, riding a train there, flying back afterward, then Ubering home from the airport. He needs a vacation.

—3—

I found a sleep history channel called Muse and Snooze that didn't end up helping me sleep very well, (the narrator's voice kind of scares me awake every now and then) but the channel sure is interesting so I think I'll start listening to it while washing dishes or something.

The problem is that I don't know how to work the interesting factoids I learn into natural conversation. So for the last week, whenever there's been a lull in conversation I've just been blurting out something random like "Did you know that Judy Garland's real name was Frances Ethel Gumm?" 

Follow me on social media for more tips on how to become the life of the party.

—4—

Something about this space drove me crazy, but I could never quite put my finger on why. Until this week.

Technically supposed to be a breakfast nook, but we don't need one and we do need a space for our computer so this is it.

After watching some Caroline Winkler videos on YouTube, I realized the problem was that everything was the same. Everything, from the furniture to the window grids to the curtain rods to the diamond pattern on the curtains, was 100% straight lines and corners. And the red curtains didn't provide enough contrast to the beige walls and the dark wood furniture.

I brought in a fluffy plant to add texture and color (actually, it got too cold for this fern to live on the deck anymore and that's what Bob Ross calls a "happy accident") and bought a round plant stand with curved legs from Amazon to change up all the squares and angles in the room. I also realized that the opposite wall was the perfect place for the painting my 11-year-old did last summer that I've been hanging onto forever and not knowing what to do with it.

I also love how this carries the green in the adjoining room through the space and makes for more of a transition. (Look at me, talking like an interior designer!)

When I hung up his painting on the wall it looked too much like one thing stacked on top of another, so Phillip had the idea to make a little photo gallery echoing the theme of my son's painting. I love how it turned out and it makes me so happy to look at as I sit here writing this!

The theme is Joseph Smith's First Vision, which you probably aren't familiar with if you aren't a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

—5—

We also put the finishing touches on that big beige wall behind our living room sofa. I bought a more appropriately sized wall clock, hung it in a better spot, and added these wall planters with pothos on either side. The planters are dwarved by the size of the clock and the wall right now, but don't worry, the pothos will fill out and trail down the sides to balance it out. 

I've been assured that pothos are impossible to kill, and I can see a little bit of growth after just a few weeks so I'm encouraged. I was worried that there wouldn't be quite enough light for them, so we snuck UV grow lights in the track lighting fixture above the plants. I know, I'm a genius.

Photo cropped at the bottom to hide my 17-year-old's dirty socks.

—6—

Up until recently the weather has stayed pretty nice, so I was fooling myself that I still had time to finish some outdoor home improvement projects.  I want to plant grass seed in a bare area of our lawn, as well as paint our front door (we'd have to leave the door open for an afternoon while it dries.)

Even though I had a sinking feeling that it was too far into October and I'd missed my window, I started those projects anyway. I laid out big tarps to kill the weeds in the area I want to reseed, and I removed the door hardware and stuffed rags in the holes and primed the door for painting.

But then it suddenly got cold, and I doubt I can finish either project. So now it just appears I'm trying to make our home look as unwelcoming as possible with tarps covering the front yard and no doorknob on the front door. Maybe I shouldn't fight it, just lean into it and get one of those "GO AWAY" doormats to complete the look.

—7—

Speaking of other things that are too late, back in the spring my 9-year-old took a field trip to a historical society where he got a packet with a corn, bean, and pumpkin seed. Native Americans in this area planted those together and called them "the 3 sisters." 

We planted his 3 sisters seed packet in a random spot in the yard and forgot about them. The corn and beans never took, probably because we never watered them and the spot we put them in wasn't sunny enough, but a tenacious pumpkin vine did grow and produced one "pumpkin" roughly the size of an Olympic handball. 

I say "pumpkin" because it's still green and tiny and isn't going to make it to maturity. But that would have been cool to grow and carve our own jack-o'-lantern.

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7 Quick Takes about Adding a Little Tony's, Running in Sock Feet, and Wise Words from Oscar the Grouch

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

—1—

Now that our youngest is 9, general conference weekends at our house are a lot calmer than they used to be. Everyone sits quietly and the kids sometimes get a piece of paper to draw on while they listen, and for the most part I don't have to do very much. They even hand out the snacks we eat while watching.

For one of the sessions, however, we invited over a friend and her two young children, and that was a whirlwind. Forget listening, my new job was doling out new coloring pages and toys every 30 seconds when they got bored, answer 1 million questions that had nothing to do with conference, and prevent them from injuring themselves or breaking something. Not that I minded, I actually miss those days.  

Plus, I love the things that come out of kids' mouths. The younger one told my 13-year-old he's going to marry her (but not until he's 7), and the older one was watching my 9-year-old struggle to open a snack and advised, "You should ask my mom. She can push a car."

"It was probably in neutral," my 9-year-old told her.

"What's 'neutral'?" she asked.

—2—

What was my favorite general conference talk? Notable mentions definitely included "The Eternal Gift of Testimony" by Kevin B. Brown and "Jesus Christ and Your New Beginning" by Patrick Kearon, but my favorite was probably this one:

TL;DR: With Creole cooking, there's a seasoning called Tony's that makes everything taste better. We're trying to follow Jesus, but maybe our ingredients are inferior or maybe we have trouble following the recipe or maybe we make mistakes, but it's ultimately going to turn out if we just add more Tony's Jesus.

—3—

I was going through my camera roll to clean it out, and I realized that I have way too many pictures like this:

Seriously, how does anyone read instruction labels without taking a picture and blowing it up?

I stopped being able to read that teen-tiny Tooth Fairy handwriting years ago, and now the photo library on my phone is 50/50 pictures of my kids and pictures of the backs of spraypaint cans and Advil bottles.

—4—

My 19-year-old arrived in Nevada this week! She's serving an 18-month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

We've always interacted a lot with the missionaries that are serving in our area, but suddenly they seem a lot younger to me now that my daughter is one of them. So I would consider it a personal favor if, should you happen to meet a pair of nicely-dressed young adults with black name tags on, you were nice to them. Especially if you live in Nevada.

—5—

My 13-year-old's cross country meets always conflict with my 9-year-old's gymnastics drop-off half an hour away, so I usually don't get to watch them. But I did go and catch the end of her meet this week!

Cross country races are 5K (3.1 miles) and they kind of wind through the woods (hence the name) and when one kid ran out into the clearing about halfway through, he only had one shoe.

I assume it was sucked off in the mud or just fell off, but I don't understand why he left it behind, instead of stopping to put it back on and keep going. It couldn't possibly take longer to tie a shoe than the time you'd lose running lopsided over 1+ miles of sticks and rocks in your sock foot, could it?

—6—

After many years of raising boys and also being married to one, I've started to realize that emotional literacy is something that doesn't come naturally to XY-oriented people. Sometimes I need to think out my feelings to grasp all the nuances, but boys seem to be capable of genuine confusion about their own emotions or even be totally oblivious to them, which is wild to me.

Is this the male equivalent of poor spatial awareness? When I say I'm not good with maps, I can tell that Phillip doesn't even understand what I mean. Like how can you not be "good" at knowing where you are if you have functioning eyes and a brain? Well, I think I get it now. Their feelings are my maps.

However, I have no idea how to improve my spatial awareness and no idea how to work on emotional literacy with my boys at home. Suggestions welcome.

—7—

Lastly, I saw this on Facebook and thought I would share if you need a little weekend motivation. You can do hard things!

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