Friday, April 7, 2017

7 Quick Takes about a Humble Idea for Changing the World, How to Tell if a Baby Is Real, and Unusual Easter Mascots

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

1


Being a parent is funny, because you subconsciously believe that the slang you used as a teenager is still in existence, but one day your kids come home talking about "dank memes" and saying "that's so cringe-y" and you realize you have no idea what's going on anymore.

I was just starting to get what 'dabbing' is, and then one of my kids announced that a teacher at school did it and now it's dead.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
It's just me and this posable figure drawing dummy from the kids' area now.

2


I spent a few hours on Saturday helping a friend vacuum and dust her house. She's the primary caregiver for her aging mother and it's consuming a lot more of her time and energy these days.

My experience left me with one question: can we please PLEASE start a worldwide cleaning co-op?

If we just cleaned each others' houses instead of our own, we'd get to work hard, leave with a sense of accomplishment, and pretend it's going to stay that way.

As opposed to cleaning our own house and putting the mop away just in time to see someone fall off their chair and knock an entire bowl of milk and cereal on the floor.

3


After cleaning at my friend's, I headed home to watch General Conference with my family. General Conference is my church's semiannual broadcast from church headquarters, with sermons covering spiritual topics from Jesus to faith to forgiveness. I look forward to it every 6 months.

It's hard for me to pick a favorite, but one I really liked was this one by Weatherford T. Clayton. (How can you not love a talk by a guy with a name like that?)


I love knowing that, like he says, "There is so much more to our existence than just what happens between birth and death."

4


We've been babysitting for friends quite a bit this week; my 5-year-old has loved having kids her age over every day and I've loved eavesdropping on their conversations as they play.

My favorite was when my daughter was cradling a baby doll and her friend asked, "Is that a real baby?"

"No," my daughter answered. "She doesn't cry when I throw her."

And then she spiked the baby like a football at her feet to prove her point.

5


Of all the reusable grocery bags in the world, I have the best ones. I bought them at ALDI years ago when I used to live near one. (Love and miss you, ALDI.)

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
I used to have 3 of these Cadillacs, but one went missing and I have no idea where.

These bags are huge. Which I love, because it means fewer trips to lug all the groceries inside. (For more on how I feel about that, see this post.)

I used to tell the bagger at my new grocery store to "make them heavy" so s/he'd use all the space, but now I just do it for the entertainment value. Some baggers hear "I would definitely like to get a hernia lifting this out of the car" and others hear "You can put two loaves of bread in this instead of one."

Usually it's one or the other, never in between.

6


And then things got weird in the seasonal aisle at CVS.
It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
I'm not exactly sure what to even say about this, but I guess nothing says "Let's celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior" quite like a giant neon green llama.

7


In theory, our attic is a rotating toy library for storing our kid's outgrown or unused toys.

In practice, it was a junk heap where we threw every old toy and avoided going up there at all costs. Except to lob in more toys like hand grenades and run away.

The attic was next in my decluttering quest, and I couldn't help thinking as I climbed the attic stairs for the billionth time that this was the stupidest first-world problem yet.

Seriously? I'm devoting an entire day to culling my collection of crapola?

Why did we, as a society, figure out how to make our lives easier by inventing things like electricity and running water, just to make it harder by drowning ourselves in an avalanche of stuff we have to constantly organize and maintain?

At the end of the day, though, we kept only the ones that are favorite toys, dropping off boxes and boxes of other stuff at our transfer station's swap area. And it felt really good to lob them in there like hand grenades and run away.

Click to Share:
Unremarkable Files

15 comments:

Unknown said...

Laughing so hard at #4! I never get rid of or store enough things when I declutter. I have such good intentions but once it is picked up it seem like so much less stuff you think it is manageable. NOPE!

Beth (Coffee Until Cocktails) said...

Oh my gosh number 4! That kind of sounds like something my son would do though, no joke! And that llama is going to be in my nightmares I think....
Beth
http://www.thebethnextdoor.com

AiringMyLaundry said...

I do love your bags! I need to get some like that.

I wouldn't mind helping others clean once in a while. Though I'm not the best housekeeper. Our house is rarely immaculate.

jen said...

An Easter llama? That's just... no.

Rachel said...

#4 cracked me up! Our reusable grocery bags are very similar--and considering that after parking in the parking lot, we must traverse one long flight of steps, an elevator trip to the 5th floor, and a long hallway of apartments...there can only ever be ONE trip. So everything will fit in those two bags.

Jenny Evans said...

I have the opposite problem and get rid of too much. I suppose I'd rather err on that side, anyway, though.

Jenny Evans said...

I'm not a very good housekeeper, either, but I figured that some help was better than none. Maybe I should have just sent a cleaning service to her house...

Jenny Evans said...

I was wondering if that's maybe from some kids' TV show I don't know about? Or maybe they're just putting the word 'Easter' in front of random items so they can sell during April. Which is probably more likely.

Jenny Evans said...

Our garage door is right next to our kitchen. I'm just lazy.

Jenny Evans (sister, not author) said...

Kara came to visit for her Spring Break and we were talking about your blog and how much we look forward to the way you catalog the five-year-old's comments.

And I couldn't agree more with your choice of favorite conference talk! I just loved everything that came out of his mouth. I think I will snag the text copy off the church website for my nightly reading tonight!

PurpleSlob said...

Where did my comment go?? It was such a good one!

StorkWatcher said...

I am your kindred spirit when it comes to our love for those Aldi bags. They truly are THE BEST~! I have actually torn one - don't recall how, but it might have been loading it with 100 pounds and I finally found the breaking point, after using that bag for 10 years... LOVE THEM>

Jenny Evans said...

Mine are probably coming up on the 10-year mark, too! They're the only reusable bags I've ever seen with rivets on the straps so they haven't broken on me yet (unlike every other reusable bag I own.)

Queen Mom Jen said...

Neon green llamas are all the range these days... Maybe they will go away quickly like dabbing did?

Queen Mom Jen said...

Range? Rage.
Tomato. Tomatoe. Right?