Friday, June 14, 2019

7 Quick Takes about Important Map Reading Skills, Things Only Slightly Less Scary Than Major Surgery, and the False Advertising on a Butter Dish

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

1


I put up our giant wall map of the world in the dining room to drum up enthusiasm for the educational around-the-world trip we do every summer. We start with New Zealand on the 24th!

My 5-year-old was looking at the map one day and asked, pointing at the bottom, "What's that?"

"It's a compass rose," I told him. "It tells you which way is north, south, east, and west."

Pointing in each direction in turn, he replied "I only know left and right and backwards and straight."

Which is pretty good for a 5-year-old, I think. I'm 37 and still mix up my right and left.

2


Phillip has been taking voice lessons for a year and has recitals all the time, but this time he roped me into it, too.

A few months ago he approached me all excited saying, "I found a nice duet of Abide With Me [a church song.] Want to sing it with me?" Falling prey to his enthusiasm, I said yes before realizing that would also mean performing it in front of live people.

I suppose I've got a decent voice, but it's totally untrained. I've only sung in high school and church choirs (where the bar is admittedly not very high, they literally have to let everyone in.) And never having done anything like this before, this was completely terrifying.

The two events I've most dreaded in my life have been my impending C-section with #5 and this duet, I'm not even joking.

But once we got up there it was actually fun, and I don't think we sounded half bad.

(It also helped that our daughters were accompanying us on the violin and piano, so the Von Trapp cuteness factor canceled out a lot of our mistakes in the eyes of the audience.)

3


On top of being scared out of my mind for the voice recital, I'd also been in the end-of-the-school-year crunch all day (no, we're still not done with school... almost, though.) I'd just finished giving my millionth ride of the day to a short person needing to be dropped off at an extra-curricular, and I was a little high-strung.

"Pretty stressed, huh?" Phillip asked.

I nodded.

"But it's going to better after today is over with, right?"

"I think so," I said. "Then again, I've been saying that for about ten years."

Not complaining, I realize I chose this busy life. I'm just making an observation about how I cope with adulthood.

4


The person who owned our house before us must have liked to garden, which is both good and bad.

It's good because without the tons of perennials she planted, our yard would be mostly dirt and crabgrass.

It's bad because I personally don't like gardening, and even if I did, I've been too busy having babies for the last 10 years to keep up the flowerbeds around our house. They've been completely neglected for a decade as a matter of survival.

But last year I decided to concentrate on restoring one bed per summer, without spending too much money or hiring anyone, and so far I'm pretty pleased with the results.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? This 7-day recap of the 8-person Unremarkable Files family will make you laugh, cry, and probably feel a whole lot more normal. #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarkablefiles #lifewithkids
This is AFTER I'd already pulled out 10 years' worth of weeds and relocated a bunch of perennials from elsewhere in the yard.

The other day I dropped my kids off with a friend and went to the house of someone I know from church who offered me some plant starts. I went home and spent the rest of the morning working in the flowerbed until I had to go pick my kids up again.

THIS IS NOT NORMAL FOR ME. I have written an entire blog post about how the last thing I'd ever do with my free time is go outside and garden.

I suppose the moral of the story is to never say never, especially when that "never" involves moving two cubic yards of mulch by yourself.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? This 7-day recap of the 8-person Unremarkable Files family will make you laugh, cry, and probably feel a whole lot more normal. #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarkablefiles #lifewithkids
Feel free to imagine me spreading this huge pile of mulch to a dramatic rendition of Celine Dion singing "All By Myself." I know I did.

Someday I'll get around to posting an 'after' picture of the finished flowerbed (maybe,) but I've never been a DIY blogger and this is one reason why. I never remember the photos.

5


Last week I accidentally knocked our butter dish off the counter and broke it, so I've been shopping for a new one.

When I ordered one, Amazon suggested Subscribe & Save, an option that delivers the item at set intervals like monthly or every 6 months. You laugh, but considering how often we break stuff around here that might not be such a bad idea.

To help me make my decision, I read several online reviews of various butter dishes and this one was probably the most helpful:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? This 7-day recap of the 8-person Unremarkable Files family will make you laugh, cry, and probably feel a whole lot more normal. #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarkablefiles #lifewithkids
I mean, I kind of have to buy it now, right?

Imagine my surprise when the butter dish arrived a few days later and instead of opening up the box and achieving Nirvana, I actually saw this:

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? This 7-day recap of the 8-person Unremarkable Files family will make you laugh, cry, and probably feel a whole lot more normal. #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarkablefiles #lifewithkids
Probably my fault for buying the red one instead of the seafoam green one in the review.

I didn't remove anything for the picture, by the way. It seriously came like this. Not a scrap of packing material to be seen... just a ceramic butter dish rattling around in the box it was loosely thrown into. I really can't figure out who thought that would be a good idea.

6


Our 15-year-old wanted to go to a friend's graduation party, but the friend lives way out in the boonies so Phillip and I decided to drop her off and make a date of it while she was at the party.

Maybe because we're on a home improvement kick after redoing the garden and putting new blinds in our bedroom, or maybe it's because there's a broken spring in our couch so sitting on it is way more exciting than it needs to be (will I plummet straight through to the floor this time?) but we decided to go couch shopping.

We didn't buy anything, but the furniture store we visited was nice and we enjoyed the ambiance of the upscale water feature near the entrance.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week? This 7-day recap of the 8-person Unremarkable Files family will make you laugh, cry, and probably feel a whole lot more normal. #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarkablefiles #lifewithkids
Phillip trying to get us kicked out of the furniture store.

There were tags on several pieces of furniture advertising a "Goof Proof" guarantee, and it took me a little while to realize that they didn't actually say "Goat Proof." Apparently I've been reading too much Inspector Flytrap with my 1st grader.

7


Many of our plates, silverware, and glasses have broken or gone missing over the years, and we're perpetually short on tableware at every meal.

I was excited when Phillip found some amazing clearance dishes to replace our plates, but I really outdid myself on the silverware and glasses.

First of all, I realized I could save a lot of money by just finding some at JCPenney.com that matched our current patterns and not having to buy as much. And then I stacked a bunch more deals on top of that:
  1. I used a J.C. Penney Father's Day coupon code for 20% off.
  2. I went through my favorite online deal site Mr. Rebates, which gives me 8% cashback on all my J.C. Penney purchases (they'd just increased it from 4%, too.)
  3. I paid using a gift card I'd bought at a 10% discount during a Father's Day promotion at the grocery store last week.
  4. I'd bought the gift card with my cashback credit card, which normally pays 1% purchases but designates a 5% category of retailers every quarter and this quarter it was... wait for it... grocery stores. Where I bought the gift card.
So basically, I think I earned money from that purchase. And I totally cashed in on Father's Day discounts even though they had nothing to do with gifts for Phillip. #sorrynotsorry

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2 comments:

PurpleSlob said...

Woo hoo all around!! Except for the butter dish, RIP.

Rachel said...

Congrats on the amazingly good dishes deal!! I think my parents are on their 3rd or 4th set of dishes since moving to Malaysia (i.e. the land where the house is made of ceramic tile so glass things break a lot). Angel and I just bought metal plates when we moved here. May not be as classic, but our plates don't shatter.