Friday, May 10, 2019

7 Quick Takes about Good Reasons Not to Help People, the Shoe Store in Our Home Office, and Why You Shouldn't Let a 3-Year-Old Be Your Hairdresser

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

1


Over the weekend, our town's interfaith council held a "Day of Service." Using recommendations from the Council on Aging, they match up volunteers with elderly people who need help taking care of their yards and we work on them for a few hours.

May is an insane month and I admit I volunteered our family's service very begrudgingly (i.e: lots of hyperbolic exclamations of "We don't have time for this!!") but once we got there I was glad we went. We got a lot done and the elderly woman who owned the house obviously needed the help.

7 Quick Takes is a weekly Friday recap of the Unremarkable Files family that will have you laughing all weekend long. Funny observations about life, kids, big families, and 'yeet.' #7quicktakes #7qt #hilarious #funny #unremarkablefiles
Leaves are all bagged up, I'm just begging my children not to break her tree before we leave.

2


Unfortunately, I must have gotten into some poison ivy while we were working in her yard.

When the rash first started cropping up and I put two and two together to realize when I'd been exposed, Phillip shrugged and said, "That's what you get for helping people."

That's why I married him. He encourages me to be my best self.

7 Quick Takes is a weekly Friday recap of the Unremarkable Files family that will have you laughing all weekend long. Funny observations about life, kids, big families, and 'yeet.' #7quicktakes #7qt #hilarious #funny #unremarkablefiles
Gross.
Last summer I got a pretty bad poison ivy rash on my leg, and my immune system completely wigged out. I was getting styes under my eyelids, weird little bruises all over my thighs, and my entire body was low-level itchy for a month.

This time it was all less severe because the rash was so much smaller, but still not my favorite thing that happened this week.

On the plus side, if the kids aren't giving me enough personal space all I have to do is wave my ooze-encrusted wrist in their faces and they disappear for a good 20 minutes.

3


In related "poor me" news, I also fell down half a flight of stairs in my house. I was okay, but it hurt. I was also mad because some idiot (me) tripped me down the stairs.

So I sat down on the step where I landed, trying to decide if I wanted to cry or yell, when my 7-year-old came over. She sat down beside me, put her hand on my back, and said in the most empathetic voice, "Are you okay, Mom? I fall down the stairs sometimes and it really hurts."

Maybe next time one of the kids gets injured, I'll skip the standard "If you'd listened to me you'd be fine now" speech and try to react more like my daughter. Motherhood is humbling like that.

4


Each of my kids needs a pair of sandals for the summer and a new pair of church shoes, which adds up to a collective boatload of footwear.

I vowed not to go to a brick-and-mortar shoe store this time, because every time I do it's never fruitful. I decided to buy everything on Amazon with free returns, and of course half of them are too small or too big, so I'm just piling all the rejects in the corner of our office so I can send them back all at once.

I'm getting closer: I think we have about 75% of the shoes we need. And our office is looking more and more like the back room of a Famous Footwear. At this point, our selection is probably better.

5


For show-and-tell at school, my 7-year-old wanted to bring her new ant farm. Since she couldn't really carry it on the bus without shaking it up, I volunteered to bring it to her classroom at show-and-tell time.

That was before I knew how stressful the trip would be. With every bump and pothole I was like "I AM SO SORRY ARE YOU OKAY??" I have never been such a nervous driver, and yes, that includes bringing newborns home from the hospital.

Anyway, we arrived safely at school and I cannot explain how much I loved watching my daughter stand at the front of the room fielding questions about her ant farm like she was holding a press conference.

Being a stay-at-home mom is hard sometimes: it's overstimulation city and you never get a moment to yourself. But most of the time, I love it and feel so fortunate to be able to do things like take her ant farm to school at 10:30 on a Thursday. This really is the best job in the world.

6


At my son's last pack meeting for cub scouts, the kids made "grass heads." They're homemade Chia pets, basically. What a brilliant idea!

7 Quick Takes is a weekly Friday recap of the Unremarkable Files family that will have you laughing all weekend long. Funny observations about life, kids, big families, and 'yeet.' #7quicktakes #7qt #hilarious #funny #unremarkablefiles
I keep thinking this guy looks like Olaf from Frozen.

The "grass" is actually wheat and it grows super-fast, which means that every couple of days we can  take it outside so my 3-year-old can give it a haircut.

(And by "give it a haircut," I mean "scream face-down on the porch because he isn't yet coordinated enough to independently work the scissors.")

7


My teenagers tell me everyone says "yeet" now.

After a long and somewhat pointless conversation, I've gathered that "yeet" is (1) a verb (2) an exclamation (3) a reminder that I've reached the point in life where the television character I most relate to is Grandpa Simpson:


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4 comments:

Megan said...

Love these Friday posts!! Yeet!

Kelly M. said...

Ugh, yes, YEET. Stop making me feel so old kids with your slang and your memes and you YouTube celebrity impersonations. Every time I need them to explain something to me, I die a little on the inside. Why don't they suffer from that same humiliation when we impart knowledge to them gained through our wisdom???

Jenny Evans said...

That's a good question, Kelly! Why aren't they like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I don't know how a 401k works! SOOOO EMBARRASING that my mom had to explain it to me! I'm so inexperienced at life."

PurpleSlob said...

Yeet now?? Sigh, The 3 yo "haircut" frustration! I feel your pain buddy!