Friday, August 23, 2019

7 Quick Takes about Unintended Food Surpluses, an Accurate Mandrill, and Advertising Tricks for Literally Any Random Product

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

1


At the park where I took the kids on Monday, there was a tennis court near the parking lot. As we were getting in the car to go home, my 5-year-old stopped to watch them and was clearly enthralled with their game.

After a few moments, he asked, "Mom, what if they're confessional players?"

I'm pretty sure he meant professional.

I have no idea where he got the word 'confessional' from. We're not even Catholic.

2


My older three kids are gone all this week visiting their grandparents, and everyone keeps asking, "Oooh, what's it like just having 3?"

I really don't know how to answer. It's easier but it's harder.

Pros:

  • Not as loud (tweens and teens pound around on orc feet and their post-pubescent voices are unbelievably large)
  • House is tidier (toy mess is easier to control than big kids who drag everything out "for a project" and then get indignant when you ask them to clean up after themselves)
  • Less driving around (younger kids=not involved in outside-the-home activities yet)

Cons:
  • My helpers are gone (toys may be picked up, but I have little time or energy left to mop, vacuum, clean toilets, wash windows, or any of the other chores the big kids usually do)
  • No one gets any of my jokes
  • Drowning in leftovers
I'm serious about the leftovers. This is what lunch looks like now. I don't think I've made lunch once since the big kids left. 

Funny quips, quotes, and observations in this week's 7 Quick Takes, a weekly update from Unremarkable Files. There's a reason why our tagline is 'family, faith, and just enough crazy to make it fun.' #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarakblefiles #funny #update #friday
Step right up! Choose a leftover, any leftover!


The little kids eat like birds and they are so not helpful in disposing of all these leftovers. I'm just about to start going door-to-door to get rid of it.

3


One thing I do really like about having only young kids is that you are totally in charge of your schedule. No activities, no part-time jobs, nothing. We can do whatever we want, whenever we want to.

I suppose that's why some women don't like the years when all their kids are 5 and under: there's no structure, no built-in breaks like school or playdates, all they want is you, you, you, and every day has the potential to feel like Groundhog Day.

But actually, that's exactly why I liked it. It's your own little universe and you are in charge. It's been fun to revisit that place again, and it's made me excited for someday when I'm a grandma and I can do that with my grandkids.

Like my parents are doing with my older kids at this very minute.

4


My 7-year-old was telling me something about her bathroom habits so I said, "You know what that sounds like?"

"What?"

"TMI."

She just looked at me confused, so I had to explain that 'TMI' means 'too much information' and it means she's telling me a lot more than I need or want to know about a subject.

A few days later she was telling some story involving a burp or a fart (I forget which,) and she stopped in the middle and said, "Mom, is that IMT?"

So close, dear.

And yes, it was.

5


I took the kids to see The Lion King remake. 

I was happy to see they fixed Rafiki this time. (It's always bothered me how the cartoon Rafiki was a species that doesn't actually exist since real mandrills don't have long tails.)

But other than that, I wasn't very impressed.

I want to like all the Disney remakes, but I just... don't. I don't feel like the live action factor adds anything significant to the movie, and they always change the favorite lines or scenes I remember from when I was a kid and that's just depressing.

I think this one particularly missed the majestic feeling of the original. They did make the animals very realistic-looking, but the problem is that real animals don't have facial expressions  so I thought the movie was frankly kind of boring!

6


One thing I liked was watching my kids watch the movie. It was my 3-year-old's first time in a movie theater and he could not stop talking about how "huuuuuuuuuuge" the "TV" was.

And my 5-year-old is interesting. He's never scared of the monsters, the chases, the fight scenes, or the mortal peril. You know, the parts you're supposed to be scared of.

He's scared of the eerie scenes, where the music dies down and it's so quiet and still you just know something or someone is going to pop up any second. So when Simba and Nala started poking around the elephant graveyard, he knew something bad was coming and covered his eyes, terrified.

And without any prompting his 7-year-old sister put her arm around him, quietly whispering that it was going to be alright until the end of the scene.

7


I still feel like there's a lot of summer left, but there's really not.

I know because of all the back-to-school exploitation I'm now seeing in advertisements to sell virtually every product imaginable.

Funny quips, quotes, and observations in this week's 7 Quick Takes, a weekly update from Unremarkable Files. There's a reason why our tagline is 'family, faith, and just enough crazy to make it fun.' #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarakblefiles #funny #update #friday
Buy our gum, get good grades, go to a good college, land a fantastic job, become rich, and have a great life. Simple, really.

Sure, gum isn't a traditional school supply, but it's totally a school supply... right?

Funny quips, quotes, and observations in this week's 7 Quick Takes, a weekly update from Unremarkable Files. There's a reason why our tagline is 'family, faith, and just enough crazy to make it fun.' #7quicktakes #7qt #unremarakblefiles #funny #update #friday
Unless you're going to dental school (and I guess even if you are,) I fail to see how this applies.

I'm still trying to figure out how having a stockpile of toothbrushes would be advantageous to your schooling. Maybe since you don't have to worry about your oral care (and don't have to find time to go to the store to buy more toothbrushes) you can think about your schoolwork more? I'm not sure. The coupon was unclear.

What's the most random product you've seen advertised as a "back to school" item?

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11 comments:

Rosie said...

My kids are still trying to convince me to buy gum because last year I let them chew it while taking math tests (theoretically it improves concentration). But I only let them because I bought it to help with pregnancy heartburn and then didn't like the flavor!

Jenny in WV said...

If a kid has braces, he may want to brush his teeth after lunch, so I guess you could stock up on back to school toothbrushes for that reason.

I don't particularly like the original Lion King, so I haven't seen the remake. I'm just not of fan of the Disney dead parent stories, or animals stories, or Shakespeare. (I've heard the Lion King is very loosely based on Hamlet?)

Your display of leftovers looks quite yummy.

Jenny Evans said...

Jenny: Well, that just blew my mind. Hamlet? It all makes sense now. (Sorry, I like Shakespeare and Hamlet is one of my favorites.)

Diana Dye said...

The gun chewer in the ad does not look focused.

My local grocery store had a back to school sale on cantaloupe and olive oil.

Madeline said...

The preview for the live-action Mulan looks pretty cool. (I have only seen Beauty and the Beast of all of them though.) I think that it does actually add a different element, but it also looks a little intense since the cartoon war was clearly downplayed.

Jenny Evans said...

The preview for the live action Mulan played before The Lion King and I actually had the thought that it looked like it might be good. Of course, I may have thought that because the original wasn't a particular favorite of mine so there's nothing for them to mess up for me!

Rachel said...

I'm a little bit interested in the live-action Disney movies just because I have a general predisposition to like shows with real humans rather than cartoons....I haven't seen The Lion King again because to me it just seemed like another style of cartoon? No humans in the movie...and when I was a kid, the only "kid movie" my grandparents owned was The Lion King so I kind of have it memorized since my grandparents' only two strategies for babysitting were: have grandkids do chores and have grandkids watch Lion King. Hey, it worked! But now I have no need to ever see it again. :P

Unknown said...

The thing about the facial expressions is exactly what Megan said. Thw arbiter of all things Disney. I liked it just because it was beautiful like the Discovery channel. I was sitting next to Tait who somehow hadn't seen original. During Pumba's scene he asked if farting was in original. That's a 12 year old boy for you!

Jenny Evans (sister, not author) said...

I too was very underwhelmed by the Lion King remake. The graphics were stunning, and that’s the only thing it had going for it. With all the other live action remakes, they’ve tried to put an original spin on it and truly remake it. This one was a shot for shot a remake of the first and at every scene you could point out at least three different ways the original was better. One of which being that the acting fell flat, and all the favorite lines from my childhood were either removed or poorly executed.

Jenny Evans said...

I thought the same thing, Jenny. Phillip couldn't come to the movie with us so he asked about it that night and said, "Was there any good new music?" I thought about it and I don't think there even were any new songs!

Jenny in WV said...

I hadn't even thought about the music being new/different. The Lion King soundtrack was the first CD we owned (I still have it) and so it is kind of special to me.