Friday, September 14, 2018

7 Quick Takes about Filling a Bucket, Trying Not To Get Over-Excited, and Polite Fender-Benders at the Grocery Store

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

1


Since the start of school 8 days ago I feel like my kids have been bringing home an inordinate number of forms for me to sign.

I don't mind when they're in elementary school because at that age they're more like little UPS packages than people and signatures must be had.

But my high schooler  I repeat, my high schooler  has brought home forms from almost every one of her classes requiring my signature saying that I read the classroom policies.

Look guys, I don't even read the iTunes terms and conditions, and that's something that might actually be beneficial for me to know.

I don't need to know her classroom policies. I don't want to know her classroom policies. I already did 9th grade. It's my daughter's job now.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Checking the second option so hard I almost tore through the paper.

One of the forms did ask me to mark either "I've read the rules" or "I trust my kid" before signing. I'm not sure if this makes me feel better or worse.

2


There's this book called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? It's about how everyone has an invisible bucket of good feelings inside, and our elementary school uses it to talk about kindness and encourage the kids to be "bucket fillers."

The day they introduced the concept, my 6-year-old came home and told her 4-year-old brother, "You're a bucket filler!"

Not knowing what she was talking about and deciding to fire back with something he figured was equally random, he retorted, "You're a pants filler!"

I could not stop laughing long enough to explain to either one what was so funny.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
I will never hear this phrase the same way again.

3


Time is weird. I've written about the motherhood time warp before, and I'll never be able to understand how one day you're dressing your baby in adorable hoodies with animal ears and then somehow you find yourself buying that same kid a 3-pack of Sexy Basics shorts on Amazon.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
I promise you these were not sexy at all. For starters, as you can see in this picture, the shorts were the color of a rotting butternut squash.

Luckily, the sexy factor is not why I bought the shorts. I intended them to be for running.

My daughter said they were too ugly for that but an acceptable level of ugly for pajamas. So I guess it turned out okay in the end.

4


This is a little premature so I'm trying not to be too excited but I AM SO EXCITED that my 6-year-old may have grown out of her peanut allergy.

Her skin test at the allergist came out negative, so she went to the lab for blood work which also came back negative. The next step is to take her back to the allergist for a food challenge, where she'll eat increasing amounts of peanut butter until she either reacts or gets the all-clear to eat ALL THE SNICKERS.

I'm cautiously optimistic; she had promising lab work a few years ago and still miserably failed the food challenge so it's not a sure thing yet. Wish us luck.

5


I watched the 1995 Jumanji with my kids at one of their friends' houses. It was actually the friend's 4th birthday and that, out of all possible movies, was his viewing request. I don't understand children.

Fast-forward to several hours later, when Phillip and I were trying to get to sleep. I'm famous for thinking of things to talk about after lights-out, and Phillip is famous for being tired, so it's kind of a bad combination.

"I don't get Jumanji," I said after maybe 10 minutes of lying there in the dark. "Why did someone make that game in the first place? What's the point?"

"It's not important," Phillip mumbled sleepily from underneath a pillow.

"Well, obviously it wasn't, based on the fact that the movie never addressed it at all  "

"No, I mean it's not important that you don't understand Jumanji right now."

Phillip can be such a killjoy after 11 PM.

6


I saw the wold's politest car accident in the parking lot at Market Basket. A gray car backed into another car a few yards away from me, leaving no dents but it did leave a streak of paint on the door.

The two drivers, both older men, slowly opened their doors and got out. Very slowly, they moseyed around the cars to assess the damage.

"It's okay, don't worry about it."

"You sure?"

"My brother's a body guy, if I want it fixed I'll ask him. It's not worth the hassle."

"Okay, then."

And then they both got in their cars and drove away.

Something tells me that from now on, whenever I read the comments on the Internet and start to think Earth is doomed, I'm going to remember those two guys and feel a lot better.

7


I wrote something I'm really proud of this week, a piece of feminist (or anti-feminist? I don't know) critique called It's the 21st Century and Women Can Be Anything. Almost.

Before Monday, it had been sitting in my drafts folder for at least 6 months. I worked hard on it and believed in my words, I just couldn't hit 'publish' because I thought it was too controversial.

Also, I have this thing about wanting everyone to like me and not call me a small-minded moron.

One night I just did it. I hit the orange 'publish' button and then ran away to bed so I couldn't change my mind. (And you know how I hate going to bed, so this must have been serious.)

When I checked my blog the next morning, it felt like picking up a cup under which I'd earlier trapped a really horrifying spider. But I saw that actually, it resonated with a lot of you, and that gave me confidence.

If you haven't already, I'd love for you to read, share, or leave a comment on this post. It's even okay if your friends read it and call me a small-minded moron. (Though, if I'm honest, I'd still prefer they didn't.)

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2 comments:

Rachel said...

The school where Angel teaches requires that all the high school teachers get a signed syllabus back from every student. I think it's their way of trying to protect the school/teachers from the phenomenon of parents complaining about their students' grades and asking for excessive re-tests because students didn't study enough for the first test. We aren't far enough along in the semester to know if it works or not. My grandpa backed into my car years ago when it was parked in his driveway and smashed my taillight...about a year after that, Angel backed into my grandpa's car and dented the door while it was parked in our driveway. He called my grandpa feeling very sorry to tell him the bad news, and my grandpa just said on the phone, "So, you decided to get revenge, then? You coulda told me you'd been carrying a grudge this whole time instead of taking it out on the poor car." Not the most polite fender bender response ever, like the one you overheard, but one that has made me laugh every time I remember my grandpa's "So you decided to get revenge?" response.

Jenny Evans said...

That makes me laugh, too! I love grandpas.