Friday, November 2, 2018

7 Quick Takes about Cruel Ironies, Precarious Ways to Harvest Your Fruit, and Corny Jokes from a Word Nerd

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

1


So I came down with a stomach bug over the weekend. I'll spare you the details, but you know how when you throw up you're mentally unable to ever again have the last thing you ate before getting sick?

It was chocolate.

This is probably the worst thing that ever happened to me.

2


How was trick-or-treating at your house? As we were running around trying to get everyone out the door on Halloween night, my 7-year-old approached me in her black cat costume and said, "I have an idea for my costume."

"What is it?" I asked, struggling to fasten my 2-year-old's costume over the layers he was wearing as he screamed in protest.

"Like, maybe I could have a tutu?"

"Okaaaaay...."I said, racking my brains for the whereabouts of a tutu and simultaneously trying to figure out why a black cat would need one in the first place.

"And I could wear, like, a leotard? And ballet shoes? Basically, I really want to be a ballerina."

When a child tells you this at T minus 5 minutes, you first make this face:

7 Quick Takes about Cruel Ironies, Precarious Ways to Harvest Your Fruit, and Corny Jokes from a Word Nerd  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

And then you do this:

7 Quick Takes about Cruel Ironies, Precarious Ways to Harvest Your Fruit, and Corny Jokes from a Word Nerd  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}

3


Once we got going, though, it was a fun night. The black cat forgot about her costume troubles and had fun.

The 4-year-old and 10-year-old recycled their respective king and banana Halloween costumes from last year. (The 10-year-old is probably going to wear his banana suit every year until he grows out of it, at which point he'll probably just buy a bigger one.)

The 12-year-old came up with a gypsy costume that I absolutely loved, complete with a glowing crystal ball she fashioned out of a battery-operated tealight and the spherical light fixture above our toilet.

The 14-year-old made a token effort at thinking up a costume and then didn't, so she just posed for pictures with all our other kids in costume saying she was "a genius" and we left it at that.

Also, we saw two trick-or-treating kids dressed like Batman and being driven door-to-door in a golf cart emblazoned with the Batcar symbol.

4


And then there was the 2-year-old, who was a surgeon. He wore a little pair of scrubs, a surgical cap, and a stethoscope from the dress-up bin, and he called trick-or-treating "going on a surgeon."

The toddler misunderstanding makes this such a cute phrase, but combine it with the adorable fact that his lisp means he pronounces it "thurgeon," and I think you can understand why we'll never correct him and trick-or-treating in our house will be called "going on a thurgeon" for the rest of his life.

5


Last week, Phillip's work held a gigantic mandatory safety training expo. His company is extremely safety conscious.

I mean, they do have laboratories and chemicals you have to be careful with, but they even have rules like you have to use the handrail when you go down steps.

It's pretty intense.

The day after he told me about the safety training, I was reading my preschooler a picture book about trucks and recognized right away that this scene would cause someone in HR at Phillip's company to have a heart attack:

illustration of a person picking apples from a ladder inside a truck's trailer - 7 Quick Takes about Cruel Ironies, Precarious Ways to Harvest Your Fruit, and Corny Jokes from a Word Nerd  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Not an OSHA-approved method for apple picking.

Actually, the way she's teetering at the top of that thing while it's haphazardly propped up on a moving vehicle is making me a little queasy, now that I think about it.

6



A few of my daughter's friends were performing in a local community theater production of Shrek: The Musical so we all went to go see it.

I'm not crazy about bathroom humor (which is why I didn't really like the movie) but I think the director cut out some scenes and cleaned it up a little, so I really enjoyed it! It was hilarious and all the characters were fantastic.

Apparently the show made quite an impression on the 4-year-old, too, but not in the way I thought. He had a million questions about the castle guards afterward, who were in about three scenes and had no speaking parts. Kids are funny.

7


I'm kind of a word nerd. I like movies like Stranger Than Fiction and novels like The Eyre Affair that are all about language, writing, and words. I saw an email from a friend looking for people to proofread the novel she's writing for NaNoWriMo and jumped on it. And this silly one-liner made me laugh all day on Thursday:

Yesterday, I bought the world's worst thesaurus! Not only was it terrible, it was also terrible.

I think I may use this joke as a litmus test to be my friend from now on. If it makes you laugh, too, you're in.

Enjoy your Halloween candy, everyone! I know my banana will.

boy in a banana costume eating a large stash of candy - 7 Quick Takes about Cruel Ironies, Precarious Ways to Harvest Your Fruit, and Corny Jokes from a Word Nerd


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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Batcar"??? I am understanding why you did not get that mother award now. Everyone knows it is the BATMOBILE!!! Speaking of Halloween, the best costumes my boys ever had was a BigMac and Large Fries. They were made out of that foam-type material and everyone, kids and adults, lost their minds when they caught sight of them. I generally did not buy costumes as they are so expensive. Sometimes I would buy a mask or some other item to compliment an otherwise "homemade" (i did not make costumes either. "Homemade" means "scrounged together") costume if I felt particularly generous. But I got these costumes on a 90% clearance AFTER Halloween one year and saved them for the following year. They were the biggest hit and I was also tickled to death that we were eventually able to pass them down to my nieces kids. Best costumes EVER!! - Kath Young

Carolyn Astfalk said...

Interesting how in that illustration it also appears that the apple trees produce multiple varieties of apples. Or maybe the apples have widely-varying ripening times.

Anonymous said...

Do you have a picture of the gypsy's crystal ball? I'd love to see it!

Jenny Evans said...

I am laughing so hard right now. Batcar. What is wrong with me? I think I need more sleep.

Jenny Evans said...

Yeah, I don't think my kids are learning a whole lot of good information from that particular book. Good thing it's just on load from the library so we can give it back soon.

Jenny Evans said...

I'll have to see if I can find one. It looked way better in person than in the pictures I took. You know how cameras always do funky things in low light situations.

Unknown said...

AuntSue
Of course there was a library book with a cow in it, a cow with 5 teats!

Jenny Evans said...

You're giving me an idea of writing a post with all the ridiculous things I've read/seen in children's books.

Amelia J said...

I'm a couple years late to the conversation, but apple trees often DO have multiple varieties of apples! Look up 5 in 1 apple trees. Apple trees are usually grafted rather than just grown from seed, since the vast majority of apple seeds produce trees with unsavory fruit. Naturally sweet apple seeds are very rare.