Friday, January 19, 2018

7 Quick Takes about Old Friends, What Happens When You Get an Ear Infection, and the Secret to Raising Budding Photographers

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

1


Hypothetically speaking, if your van's automatic sliding door goes haywire and chews up its own mechanism and spits out a frayed wire in the library parking lot, is that going to be expensive to fix?

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted@ Unremarkable Files}
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important would you say this part is?

Until we get it fixed, this nifty electrical hazard is sitting on the dashboard and the sliding door is completely jammed. Meaning that I have to use the opposite door and crawl across every time to buckle and unbuckle the baby's car seat.

Now would be a good time to call my parents so they can tell me how they raised kids when minivans only came with one sliding door and automatic hadn't even been invented yet. I'm feeling way too sorry for myself over this.

2


Some friends of ours from Ohio, where we lived before we moved here 8 years ago, were in the area and we got to see them! We left the kids at home and went to a nearby Indian restaurant for dinner.

We were so busy talking over the naan we'd ordered as an appetizer that 20 minutes went by before we realized no one had come back to the table. Our server had completely ditched us.

We flagged someone down who quickly took our order and then avoided our table for the rest of the night. No one even came to check on us, although someone else did come by and put our food on the table.

We had to ask for our drinks, ask for more water, and as we sat and sat with our empty plates in front of us wondering if maybe the food was just free today, eventually had to ask for the check.

It was kind of an adventure all the way through: were we going to get our food? Were they going to bring us a check? Were they going to bring our credit cards back or would they get lost somewhere between our table and the register? No one knew, it was so exciting!

On an average night I would've been annoyed but it was so awesome to see our friends again, and I have to admit it was really good naan.

3


You may not know this from just reading the blog, but in person I can take a really long time to say things. Sometimes I bore myself in the middle of telling a story and I just stop, and no one even notices. I'm like the Victor Hugo of talking.

Phillip knows this about me and although it's a pretty irritating quirk, he humors me most of the time and gently lets me know when I need to hurry it up. Usually by making stupid jokes if there's a too-long silence in my story.

"Did you know..." I said to him in my long-winded way after reading something interesting at the library, "...that when you get an ear infection..."

He smiled and said: "An angel gets its wings?"

4


My 13-year-old needed a blood draw at her doctor's appointment, and I was sitting in the lab with her debating whether I should watch or not.

I don't have a problem with needles, but there's something about seeing blood spurt out of a person's vein like that that gives me the heebie-jeebies. Always has.

It creeps me out so much that once when I needed a blood draw in high school I forced myself to watch (because I was determined NOT to be a weenie about it anymore,) and promptly passed out. Actually, I let them finish, told the nurse I was just fine thanks, excused myself to the restroom, and passed out on the floor there, but that's beside the point.

What's important here is that I've developed sort of a weird phobia about blood draws, and I was debating whether I should try conquering my fear by watching my daughter get one.

Ultimately, I didn't end up watching. I thought it was better safe than sorry, especially since I'm the one driving home.

Which was a good choice, because evidently it's genetic. Halfway through the blood draw, the tech had to lie my daughter down with her feet up to keep her from losing consciousness.

5


On the way to my 11-year-old's first orthodontist appointment, she was asking me questions about getting braces, including "Will braces make me talk different?"

"Yes," I told her seriously. "You'll sound like Yoda."

We laughed about what would happen if she really did show up at school the next day talking like Yoda, and she said she'd just explain herself by telling people "Got braces, I did."

I love that kid.

Parenthetically, I really like our orthodontist so far but I may not be able to bring my preschooler along to any more of his sister's appointments. He discovered a fart gun in the basket of toys in the lobby, and although it was kind of cute watching him blast himself in the ear repeatedly and laughing, I can imagine it getting old at future visits.

For me, not for him.

6


I went to watch my 8th-grader compete in her school's geography bee, and it was a lot more hardcore than I was expecting.

The 10 finalists had to answer the questions through a microphone at a lectern in the center of the gymnasium. The entire school was watching, and kids in the audience were waving signs with the competitors' names like you see in the NBA (i.e: "You CAM do it!!")

My 6th-grader and her buddies were cheering on their friend Sydney with signs that read "Whip their Djiboutis, Sydney!" and "Kick their Botswanas!"

I was super-nervous for my 8th grader, but she did awesome, tying for third place and looking like she was having fun doing it. I, on the other hand, had to go home and lie down afterward.

Like I said, it was intense.

7


We have an iPad but I don't personally use it much. Mostly the kids use it to play Minion Rush, which I manage to feel okay about by also installing a number of educational apps they never use.

But I noticed when I picked it up the other day that the photo gallery was completely full, so I decided to take a look.

Apparently, the 1-year-old discovered the camera function and thinks the point of the game is to press the button furiously until someone takes it away.

I'm guessing because there were 72 identical pictures of his blanket on there.

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


Click to Share:
Unremarkable Files

5 comments:

Kathleen said...

The Victor Hugo of talking. That is so funny! I love Les Mis but I always skip with long battle type passages!

Anonymous said...

Congrats to your 8th grader on the 3rd place finish! Is it okay for me to super brag that my 5th grade son won as the SCHOOL CHAMPION. He took the online quiz yesterday to see if he advances to state. He seems pretty nonchalant about it all while I am going crazy wanting him to keep going. As usual, I find myself smiling a lot from reading your posts. Thank you!

Jenny Evans said...

Wow! Congratulations to your son. That is a crazy achievement. Listening to the bee, I couldn't believe some of the questions they were asked. The only thing more surprising was that the kids actually knew the answers!

PurpleSlob said...

Hilarious as usual..
Maybe it's an epidemic, my van door is acting cranky too. Did that part just fall out?? I am thinking of moving the 20 mo seat to the other side. I can't do the crawl in thing!!

IMF said...

thanks for this exceptional put up, i find it very exciting and very well notion out and put together. I sit up for reading your work within the destiny. SameDayUtah.com