Friday, July 22, 2016

7 Quick Takes about Breaking Up with Tom Cruise, How We Might All Die from Bird Flu, and Why Environmentally-Friendly Disposable Diapers Never Caught On

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

1


Well, it's official: I have watched my last action movie ever. And it's not you, Edge of Tomorrow, it's me. I've just reached an age where I can comfortably say that I've given you and your genre a fair shot, and I legitimately don't like you.

The plot was actually pretty good. If Edge of Tomorrow was a book, I'd be all over that. It's just that I hate noisy battle scenes, which always drag on for infinity.

After 3 explosions my eyes glaze over, and after more than 15 consecutive seconds of gunfire I go into a catatonic stupor. Somehow it's both sensory overload, and incredibly boring at the same time.

2


My oldest daughter went to church camp for the 12-17 year old girls in our area, and had a great week. Her two favorite activities were making things in the craft barn and the archery range. Oh yeah, and all that spiritual stuff.

She also brought home this hawk feather she found, which I have to admit looks pretty cool, but I unfortunately inherited a visceral revulsion to bird feathers from my mother.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Makes a fantastic quill pen AND can give you bird mites!

My kids can get dirty, catch frogs (that sometimes pee on them), have ticks hitch a ride on their scalps and I won't bat an eye. But for some reason I can't stand the thought of carrying around a bird feather. In my mind, those things are just crawling with disease.

Like, I am 99% sure they will catch the plague if they touch their face with it. And they always seem to touch their face with it.

Anyway, I'm trying not to overthink the bird feather and just be cool about it.

I remember finding a peacock feather as a child on the ground at a petting zoo and bringing it home, where I kept it in my room for several years. And I'm not dead yet.

Although my mom was probably in the other room having heart palpitations until the day I finally threw it out.

3


The day after my daughter came home, I had to pester her a few times to get her to unpack her duffle bag, hoping the whole while that she wouldn't notice the mostly-unpacked suitcase in my room from our Utah vacation two weeks ago.

In the last few years I've learned that's what parenting is all about: training your kids lovingly to do the right thing, while quietly ignoring your own good advice at least half the time.

4


The pack of disposable diapers I'm currently using up on my son may be good (or at least less bad) for the environment, but they sure do look gross.

They're unbleached diapers, meaning that they basically look like sheets of mottled off-white recycled paper versus crisp new sheets of white typing paper you'd buy at Staples.

Or, as Phillip said when he pulled the first diaper out of the package, "You bought the pre-pooped kind!"

Yes, it looks like the diapers are full of poop before you've even put them on the baby. (I debated including a picture in this post, but I thought that was kind of weird and decided against it.)

The thing is, I bought them because I found them in the clearance aisle at CVS for dirt-cheap, so maybe they really are pre-pooped. I guess that would explain the steep discount.

5


I've seen a lot of variations of the vinyl stick family you see on the backs of minivans, including zombies and Mickey Mouse, but this is probably the best one I've seen:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I'm still laughing over the little hooded Jawa that is their child. Every time my toddler walks around wearing a towel after his bath, that's what I'm going to see now.

6


Saw this sign sitting outside of our local lawn, garden, and pet supply store and wasn't sure it came across the way they wanted it to:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

I'm assuming they're advertising to sweet old ladies with a chicken coop in the backyard, so hopefully their sign didn't attract any unsavory customers.

7


Finally, Phillip tore out our porch railing. This is something we've been talking about doing forever. The railings were only there for aesthetics, but since they were supremely ugly it  kind of defeated the purpose. We were okay with ugly, though, it was just that they'd also started falling apart.

One minute they were holding up okay except for one loose part, and the next minute entire sections of the railing were sagging and buckling until it looked like we lived in a haunted house.

I'm not even exaggerating, it was seriously unsafe. My mother-in-law leaned against one of the railings when she was here visiting after the baby was born and almost fell through.

And while we were at it (that's a lie, only Phillip was at it,) we decided to pry up the faded floor boards and replace them, which was hard, hot, sweaty, time-consuming work.

Not having a nail gun, Phillip pounded each individual nail with a hammer. Even though the porch isn't big, it was a lot of nails. So many that this happened halfway through:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
At this particular point in the project, Phillip is contemplating blowtorching the entire porch.

Phillip was less than thrilled, as you can see from this picture. At least it's (almost) done.

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13 comments:

The Not So Perfect Catholic said...

I'm cracking up over the "pre-pooped diapers"!
I gave up on Tom Cruise following his crazy, jump on the couch days. I haven't seen one of his movies since. Not the ones that he's in, anyway. I don't have the time (or don't take the time!) to research which production companies he's involved with. I'm sure he's feeling the sting of my money not making it to him! (ha, ha!)

Megan said...

Ha! The bird feathers, it's something my mom passed to me too. I've had so many in the house though, maybe I'm cured?....I still think they're disease ridden.

Unknown said...

I am glad to know someone else has an irrational disgust for bird feathers. I hate them and the birds as well. We had chickens for a few years and the few times I had to shut them in at night because NO ONE else was available, it was horrible and I had to shower immediately after. My husband even made me touch a chicken once for the amusement of the kids. Traumatizing!
I really like #3 as well! Mine usually revolves around remembering to bring important things to town.

Jenny said...

I feel the same about bird feathers. We did really good with our kids not even noticing them to pick them up until my sisters kids did it. Now they never leave them on the ground. Although I'd probably have a panic attack about a tick too.

Alicia said...

I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but is it okay to have a hawk feather? My husband keeps telling me it's a felony to have a raptor feather. You might want to check out http://www.blm.gov/id/st/en/prog/NLCS/MNSRBP_NM/links/raptor_possession.html

When our 3yo found one and was holding it a few weeks ago, my husband kept calling him an "accidental felon."

On the upside, this might be just the info you need to be done with feathers forever!

Jenny Evans said...

Okay, I had never heard that before! But after 20 minutes of alternately Googling and legit freaking out, I'm reasonably sure it's actually a turkey feather. Still gross, but legal. Phew!

Jenny Evans said...

For me it's not really a Tom Cruise problem, but with the entire action genre as a whole. All of them are just a total snore-fest for me.

Jenny Evans said...

Thank your lucky stars you don't live in New England, then. In the spring we pull ticks off of our children's scalps daily. They're everywhere, I've even seen a few crawling around in the house like they own the place. Hence the nightly "tick check" when everybody just spreads their legs and arms like they're getting a pat down from the cops and we look for ticks we missed during the day.

Jenny Evans said...

It does feel irrational to me. Are they really dirtier or more disease-ridden than the rocks and bugs they're touching outside? I doubt it. But I can't help it.

Rachel said...

My Mom definitely raised me with a healthy/unhealthy fear of touching feathers. :P
And the hammer just broke??? What?! How does that not even happen? I didn't even know that hammers breaking in use was a thing? I feel like most of the hammers in the family tool collection are older than I am so I just assumed hammers are the sort of thing that pass from one generation to the next...
I like the Star Wars family. Does that count as an action movie? There's a good number of action movies I really like...but I wouldn't say I'm a fan of the genre. I don't like explosions or fighting for their own sakes, but I like Han Solo and some superheros and good vs. evil kind of stuff.

Michelle said...

Pre-pooped!! I love it.

I'm with you on action movies. 9/10 I am bored to tears. I want to be the cool girl who loves those kinds of movies, but I never will be. And I accept that.

That sign! That gave me a good laugh.

Jenny Evans said...

I was a little shocked at the hammer thing, too. Hammers are the kind of thing that everyone just HAS but they're so old you don't even know where they came from. I'd see them in the hardware store and think, "Who buys those?"

I like Star Wars too, but even when Phillip was watching the trilogy with the kids I noticed that one in particular seemed to have more battle scenes in it and I totally zoned out.

Jenny Evans said...

Ditto on your comment, plus I feel that way about sports, too.

I was watching some big deal basketball game with Phillip a while ago (and by watching, I mean sitting next to him on the couch doing something completely different and paying no attention at all) and he was explaining the game to me like you'd explain to a 2-year-old. At one point he referred to the teams as "the orange guys" and "the blue guys" and I just started laughing, because that is how low my sports IQ is. I literally could not care any less than I do.