Friday, March 16, 2018

7 Quick Takes about Quirky Things New Englanders Do, Stress Balls, and the True Price of Cheap Toilet Paper

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

1


I can't confirm my suspicions, but I think Phillip is purposely scheduling work trips around the weather so I have to be the one to snowblow the driveway.

My kids, however, were thrilled about getting 15" of snow in one day this week.

With an idea I got from one of the smart parents on the blog's Facebook page, I told the kids to put on all their snow gear and we headed for the playground. (After I spent 100 hours clearing the driveway, that is.)

They had a blast there because the snow was so deep you could jump off the equipment or tumble down the slides and not get hurt. They even figured out they could ride the sled down the snow-covered stairs and through the tube slide.

So I'm basically the world's funnest mom now.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Just me, waiting for my kids to finish playing at the park.


2


New England is a funny place, with odd things you won't find anywhere else. Such as candlepin bowling.

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

In candlepin bowling, the ball is about the size of a bocce ball with no finger holes, and the pins are harder to knock over because they're skinny pillars.

I knew that, but I wasn't informed before we went that the game also has different rules than regular bowling AND we had to score it the old-fashioned way on a piece of paper.

I wanted to cry when the bowling alley proprietor handed us a printed sheet on how to keep score and walked away. Doing math is the last thing I want to do with my recreational time! Plus it was a Friday night, and like most weeks, my brain was completely fried by Tuesday afternoon.

Luckily, my teenager came to the rescue and kept score. We had fun once we got going.

3


My daughter made stress balls at a church activity a few weeks ago by filling balloons with rice, and they've been migrating around the house being played with by various children ever since.

But it turns out that homemade stress balls are, ironically, extremely stressful because you never know when one is going to explode and shower rice all over the room.

I know that now.

4


Just in time for National Password Day yesterday, I was forced to create a new password for one of my online accounts.

Considering that the account is for printing out 75 cents-off coupons for Scott toilet paper, the password requirements seem excessively secure.

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

On the plus side, I suppose T#27$@9d3 is a pretty good password because nobody will ever be able to guess it, remember it, or enter it correctly. Including me.

5


I love going to church as a family and I think one of the most important things I can do as a parent is take my kids to church, but to be clear, between all 8 of us there's a whole lot of wiggling, whining, and general shenanigans going on in our pew almost every Sunday.

This week was no exception, so I admit my first response to hearing my 4-year-old's distressed, "Mom?!?" was to shush and roll my eyes. Then I looked over to see him sitting there with a horrified expression on his face and the sole of his shoe in his hand.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
I was about to ask how it happened, but the question never got asked because at that moment, the 1-year-old tried to play with it, the 4-year-old yanked it away, and the 1-year-old had an epic temper tantrum complete with full-on face-down wailing on the floor.

And that's why I love church with kids. Sometimes we sit in reverent contemplation of God's word; sometimes we go all Hunger Games over the detached sole of a shoe. You never know which it's going to be.

6


I've been doing a little bit of cleaning up around the house and behind a cabinet I found this artwork that had fallen behind it since the last time I cleaned back there. So like, when we moved in.

I really enjoyed this one, which features a Googly-eyed monster in a Santa hat saying "Roar Hi I'm a monster:"

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Hooked on Phonics worked for me!

 And this one, in which I seem to be sporting an exceptionally awesome flat-top:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
This cultural obsession with "thigh gap" is getting ridiculous.

Usually when I clean an out-of-sight place I find petrified food or something expensive that we already paid to replace, so this was a nice change.

7


In looking at the calendar, I noticed our elementary school has had an inordinate number of pajama days already this year. I like it.

I'm a huge fan of Pajama Day, because sending your kids to school in what they wore last night makes the mornings go So. Much. Smoother.

Other days that the school could institute to make my life easier would be Poor Oral Hygiene Day (Oh, you forgot to brush again this morning? Cool, guess what day it is??) and Drew All Over Myself With Markers And There Wasn't Time To Take a Bath Day.

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11 comments:

Megs said...

I second, "Marker-no-bath Day"
Also, move for, "Same hairdo all week day"

AnneMarie said...

A snowy playground sounds like so much fun!!!! What a neat idea.
That picture of your kid's shoe is so funny. In high school, I had a problem with shoes-I just wore them out really fast, and there were a couple times where the bottom of the shoe would fall off. In fact, once in the lunch line, the supervisor said, "Hey, you left something back there" and pointed to the bottom of my shoe lying on the floor a couple yards behind me.

Carolyn Astfalk said...

Lots of fun here - except the passwords. I'm convinced Hell is a series of usernames, passwords, and authentication questions for which you don't know the answer.

Unknown said...

Oh man - the passwords always kill me. We use 'Last Pass' which generates the passwords AND saves them for you AND makes remembering them so much easier. Basically like Heaven on earth.

Ann-Marie Ulczynski said...

My four year olds show broke in church one Sunday. It was an adorable pair of pink Sandler’s with frogs on them. She actually handled it really well, but I lost it when my husband whispered to me, “ it croaked.”

Carolyn said...

Laughing a ton at the homemade stress ball mental image. I loved balloons, until becoming a parent. Now the "when is it going to pop" anxiety has changed the game.

Jenny Evans said...

That would be a great one! Adding that to the petition right now.

Jenny Evans said...

We have one kid who is also really rough on shoes. They never last a full season. Part of the problem is wearing them inside. We're always saying "Go to the door and take your shoes off!" because socks are cheaper to replace when they wear out!

Jenny Evans said...

I tend to think of it as one eternal shift working the concession stand at a 10-year-old's soccer game, but same idea.

Jenny Evans said...

We played a game at my 6-year-old's last birthday party where the object was to pop the balloons as quickly as possible to get the papers inside. Well, my 1-year-old saw that and now he thinks that is what you do with balloons anytime. The second you give him a balloon he intentionally pops it. But at least he's happy about that.

bobbi said...

This was such a fun post. I literally laughed out loud more than once. (The hubby kept asking, what are you reading??) I'm not sure what I loved more - the stressful stress ball, the password, the shoe and hunger games or the flattop. priceless. :-)