Friday, January 29, 2016

7 Quick Takes about Being Unprepared on Every Possible Front, Becoming an Environmentalist, and Giving Spelling Lessons With Soap In My Eyes

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


Like mother, like daughter.

My 6th grader forgot to bring home a permission form for a field trip, so she called me from school on the last possible day to ask if I could bring money and run in to sign the permission slip when I picked her up that afternoon.

Right down to the wire, but that's okay, right? We've got this.

Except that once I got in there, I searched through my purse and realized I'd used my last check and had no cash in my wallet.

Sigh. We are that family.


Right now I'm working my way through a stack of books the size of Mount McKinley. Nothing exciting, unfortunately. Mostly books on childbirth and other random works of non-fiction that don't interest anyone but me.

Also pictured (at right): the reason I won't get any of these read.

The public library and I are in sort of an on-again, off-again relationship. I'll go for 6 months without reading a book for myself, and then all of a sudden I get a ton of great recommendations and reserve all of them.

It's only once I get home to dump them on my nightstand that I remember that I usually run out of time to shower, letalone read A BILLION PAGES before everything's due back at the library.


My daughter's violin teacher invited us to come see her orchestra's open rehearsal for an upcoming concert (she probably realizes that admission to fancy stuff for our entire family of 7 costs the same as our mortgage so it doesn't happen too often.)

We were probably the only people in the audience under age 70 (and definitely the only people eating Cheerios out of plastic baggies,) but hey, it was free and the kids got some culture.


We installed a new desktop (or whatever the terminology is for that thing Phillip did to our computer,) and now instead of a "trash" folder it has a "recycle bin."


Call me crazy, but I feel so much better about how my environmental footprint now.


When she learned it was my friend's birthday, my 4-year-old wanted to make her a card. The sentiment was very sweet, but I learned that day that it isn't easy to give spelling and writing help to a preschooler from inside the shower.

"How do you spell Happy Birthday?"

"First you write an 'H.'"

"How does an 'H' go?"

Um, I'm soaking wet in the shower. So I'm sticking shampoo bottles over the top of the curtain and pointing: "See that letter right there? That's an 'H.'"

The finished card was from the heart and I'm sure my friend appreciated it, but it was also totally illegible since my daughter haphazardly wrote the letters anywhere she pleased.


Okay, serious moment. My 4-year-old has been begging for a while to watch Frozen, saying that the last time we saw it was "a long, long time ago when I was 3 and I don't remember it." (Yeah, whatever.)

Anyway, we watched it this week and I was totally shocked by a scene I didn't remember at the end. So they're wrapping things up and Anna bests the bad guy with a witty one-liner, turns away like she's going to be the bigger person, then turns around and punches him into the water.

The kids all laughed and I was like "WAAAAAAIT a minute! Time out! Would that still be funny if the bad guy was a girl, and the good guy was a guy, and he punched her in the face so hard he knocked her off the boat?"

I mean, I'm not Gloria Steinem or anything, but geez. Talk about a double-standard.


A few weeks ago, I had a slightly embarrassing incident that I decided to put on the blog's Facebook page, doubting that anyone out there would possibly be able to relate:


But the fine people of Facebook came through and I was pleased to see stories come rolling in about how someone's friend or sister showed up at the exact wrong time to collect her kids, making them look like the worst sitter in the world.

The same child came over again this week, and I had to laugh when his mom carried him in without pants. Partly just to mess with me, but partly because he'd pulled them off in the car.

So it wasn't all my fault!

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Maddy@writingbubble said...

Sounds like another hectic week! I love the 'no pants' thing! I usually have a (brief) moment in every playdate when I think 'if the parents came to pick their child up now, I would look so in control and like a super-parent!' but they NEVER come then, they always come 2 minutes later when the kids have gone berserk! Oh, and I totally agree with you about that scene in Frozen - total double standard! x

PurpleSlob said...

Jenny, yay! You got a shower!! Woo hoo!
No pants? No problem!

Lyndsay said...

I can't take a shower without being interrupted a minimum of six times.
A very similar situation has taken place with my third child. She is five and extra twirly and just can't wait to know how to spell important words like 'exclusive' and 'hotdog'. *facepalm*
Or she will be asking how to read a word. 'What word?' 'This word, read it, please!' Through the closed curtain.
Clearly my super mom X-ray vision hasn't grown in yet. ;)

Queen Mom Jen said...

Haha you couldn't find his pants! Yep been there done that. Last night we had to go somewhere and one of my children, who should be old enough to dress alone held us all up because they didn't have pants on. Sigh.

Jenny Evans said...

I thought it was just me! I have the exact same thoughts when I babysit. Unfortunately it never works out for me, either!

Jenny Evans said...

You should work on that!

Sarah said...

We don't have an issue with pants, but we do have an issue with shoes. There just must be something about my house that makes kids want to take their shoes off. It is the first thing my son's friends do when they get here (doesn't matter which friend) and they promptly get lost.

Marina @ Parental Journey said...

And where were the pants??

Jenny Evans said...

Upstairs, hidden under a beanbag in the kids' room... Go figure.

Jenny Evans said...

Ugh, don't even get me STARTED on shoes. My kids scatter their shoes everywhere, so that at the last minute we're tearing the house apart, are late for whatever we're going to that morning, and finally find one in the bathroom and the other under the dining room table.

Moonofsilver said...

One time my mom was over and my husband almost took his pants off in the living room when he got home. He's used to just taking them off. My mom was sitting right in the couch, and I was like WHAT are you doing and he jumped lol. Weird moment.

Jenny Evans said...

When you need to relax, sometimes you just need to relax. Mother-in-law or no!