—1—
Do you ever have those weeks/months/years when everything is broken?
Our trusty minivan just crossed the line where it doesn't make sense to pour any more money into repairs. (When we told the 13-year-old we're planning on buying a new one in the spring she said, "Oh, good. Now I won't have to clean out that pear juice that spilled in the cupholder, like, 3 years ago." Umm... what?)
Our dishwasher is toast. That's not new; it's been out of commission for a month. I'm simultaneously kind of used to it and kind of ready to jump out the window if I have to wash one more dish by hand. (A new one should be arriving today, in the super-specific time window of 12:30 to 4:30.)
And then there's our bodies. There's my cutaneous lupus, my 3-year-old went on antibiotics for Lyme disease, and we just learned that the 5-year-old has pneumonia.
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| If I ever need a chest X-ray I'm going here because they give out rubber ducks afterward instead of lame stickers. |
So it's fine. We're fine.
—2—
You've probably seen a Little Free Library before, maybe outside of a house or park or public building.
It's a little book collection, usually housed in a cute structure about the size and shape of a dollhouse, and people are supposed to take and leave books on the honor system.
Anyway, I was with my kids at their favorite park and happened to glance at the Little Free Library where a very familiar volume caught my eye:
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| Could that be The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ? Why, yes. I believe it is. |
We don't live in an area with a ton of other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so I wonder where it came from...
—3—
My three oldest kids have been visiting their grandparents for the last 10 days, so while they were gone we decided to do lots of things that the little kids would enjoy.
Apparently having completely forgotten what it's like to have all little kids, one night I planned for us to have a bonfire in the backyard. We'd roast hot dogs and make S'mores. It would be so fun and the kids would love it!
Or not.
They were too young to roast their own hot dogs (either they held them in direct flame, dropped them on the ground, or complained about the heat) so Phillip and I had to do them all.
Everyone was complaining, the hot dogs kept jumping out of their buns (the kids swore they never dropped them,) and no one could balance their plates on their laps or put together their own S'mores. To top it all off, the mosquitoes were awful.
As we tore through the yard to escape the bugs and reach the safety of the house I think I heard Phillip call out, "Thanks, Mom, this is fun!"
—4—
It may sound ironic because he's a mechanical engineer, but Phillip is actually my favorite editor. He always gives me helpful feedback on my writing.
After reading a post I'm currently working on, Phillip paused and said, "I like your writing style. It's really distinctive. You're... passive-aggressively funny."
Which, frankly, I think is a perfect way to describe it.
Later that day, I mentioned something he'd forgotten to buy when he went to the store so he smiled and said, "Surprise! Your husband's an idiot!" So now I think I know where I get the passive-aggressive humor.
—5—
Finally it was time for the big kids to come home, so I went to pick them up at the airport. And you know how the airport always makes a dozen paranoid-sounding announcements over the loudspeaker about unattended bags every time you're there?
Well, they are not playing around. My 13-year-old left her backpack in the terminal, and by the time she realized she didn't have and we backtracked to the ticketing counter to ask for help, it was already being rifled through by a state trooper and probably on its way to be blown up in a field somewhere just to be safe.
Luckily, the state trooper did bring out my daughter's bag in one piece and gave it to her. I asked if he needed to keep her in jail overnight to teach her a lesson, but he said no.
—6—
We've been noticing lately that the kids need to work on their mealtime manners, so I suggested we sit down and brainstorm a list of good manners we'd like to start using at the dinner table.
The very first item suggested was "no burping," so we have kind of a long way to go.
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| If they do even half of these things, I'll be thrilled. |
I made a bingo sheet out of the 9 most important ones (read: the ones my kids never, ever do) and my plan is to let the little kids play bingo with mini chocolate chips and eat the ones they put down at the end of the meal.
I had a good laugh while making the bingo sheet, though, because every time I tried to type "clear your place" my computer's spellcheck changed it to "clear your placenta."
—7—
We are so close to the start of school! By the time I write 7 Quick Takes next Friday, I'll be up to my eyeballs in first-day-of-school paperwork.
(The kids actually relish giving me all the paperwork because I always pretend to be furious at having so much "homework" to do.)
My 5-year-old is going to kindergarten this year and I kid you not, the other day he had "bus orientation." We went all the way to the school so he could take a 5-minute bus ride while they explained the rules of the bus.
I probably would've been annoyed if it weren't so stinking adorable.
3 comments:
On my first day of Kindergarten (in a school district that had just done some consolidation, so things were a bit of a mess), the school tried to send me home on the wrong bus! My mom had to come pick me up. Bus orientation would have been helpful back then.
Our dinnertime rules poster has "stay in your chair" and "sit up in your chair". Yes, they need to be two separate rules. And we are working on teaching our 2 year old NOT to call on someone to say the prayer. That's dad's job. He ends up saying his own along with whoever is called on anyway.
cutaneous lupus? Poor guy, I've heard Lyme disease is a bear.
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