7 Quick Takes about Inevitable Change, Futuristic Things I Don't Particularly Care For, and What My Preschooler Hears When I Say "Get in the Car"

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

—1—

I wrote in my previous post on church callings that when you feel comfortable in one calling you inevitably get released and given a different one, right?

So that happened.

I was honest to goodness in the middle of writing about how much I enjoyed my current calling as nursery leader when I was asked to accept a new calling as a counselor to the president over the Young Women's (i.e: teenage girls) organization.

It's bittersweet to say goodbye to nursery, which was a much-needed breather for me. It involved little prep work and was completely inside my comfort zone because taking care of little kids is the most natural thing in the world to me.

But I look forward to a calling that stretches me, and more importantly gives me a reason to get to know and love the Young Women in our congregation.

The older my kids have gotten, the more thankful I've gotten that it's not just Phillip and I looking out for them.

At church, there are so many people thinking about them, praying for them, teaching them good values, and trying to help them see the worth they have in God's eyes.

It's pretty humbling and kind of awesome to think that this is my opportunity to be one of those people for the other families at church, whose teen daughters need a network of people who love them every bit as much as mine do.

So as I was sitting in the bishop's office with the rest of the Young Women's presidency waiting to be set apart (given a priesthood blessing to help me in my new calling,) I was feeling okay — maybe even good — about this new change.

Only briefly did I reconsider when the Young Women's president leaned over and asked, "Can we have a presidency meeting tomorrow at 7:30?"

I realize now that the correct response wasn't spitting out my drink and gasping, "in the MORNING?!?"

—2—

Luckily, the 7:30 meeting (to which I was late, and I wasn't even surprised) isn't a regular thing and we're meeting at a much more sensible hour going forward.

One night a week, the Young Women have an activity at the church. This week was getting to know your new leaders. Each of us presidency members had 5 minutes to teach the girls a new skill.

I taught them how to be funny.

Allow me to explain. In the writing of this blog, I've dissected humorous stories, memes, and jokes more than any normal human probably should, and asked over and over, "Why is this funny? If it isn't funny, why not? How could it be funnier?"

It may sound like I'm ruining the magic of a perfectly good joke and maybe I am, but to me it's totally fascinating. Read this and this if you don't believe me. There's a science to funniness, and I love that.

—3—

After having been saddled with a broken dishwasher for a month, we finally got a new one. We researched, read reviews, and pored over ratings. We even found a family at church who owns and loves the dishwasher we ultimately bought.

And I don't like it.

For starters, it's too sleek and streamlined. The racks just slide all around with no resistance whatsoever. The door is hard to close properly because there isn't a hard latch you can really feel.

The control buttons aren't actually buttons; they're just touchscreens with no feedback, which means that when it's any of the kids' turns to run the dishwasher they freak out and start punching every button in sight like deranged monkeys yelling, "It's not worrrrrrrrking!"

It's also one of those new high-efficiency machines that takes 3-7 business days to finish a load of dishes, and in conclusion I'm not sure anymore that I am up to the 21^st century.

—4—

School started this week! Everyone seems to be adjusting well, even the kindergartner I was most worried about.

He's always had a hard time separating from us. During swim lessons in August, there were several days when the instructor had to physically pry him from my arms to get him to join the class.

Luckily, he'd gotten to ride the bus once before because there was a kindergarten bus orientation last week (in which the principal did have to pry him from my arms,) and his 7-year-old sister is in the same school so he didn't have to get on alone.

I explained to her ahead of time that he'd probably be scared, so she had to hold his hand and then sit with him once on board. She's a great sister so she was like, "Yeah, I was already planning on it."

Cute even if it was 100% coached.

However, all our worrying was apparently for nothing because he happily skipped onto the bus and then came home and said "school was fun!" So there's that.

—5—

Do you want to know why parents are always late?

While everyone else was at school it was just the 3-year-old and me at home, I thought we'd run some errands. When I told him to get in the van and buckle up while I did one last thing in the house, he headed outside obediently and I thought, This is so easy!

Until I went outside to find the van totally empty. He wasn't even in the garage. He was sitting in the window well playing with a tennis ball.

And that is why we're never on time for anything, ever.

—6—

We have a beautiful deck on the back of our house, but while we were busy having babies it sat neglected for almost a decade, accumulating more weather damage every year.

We prayed the serenity prayer and recognized that fixing it was so low on our priority list we had to just let it go, and so the cardinal rule of our house became "don't walk on the deck barefoot unless you want to end up with an inch-long shard of wood in your foot." It was that bad.

I even entered it in an ugly deck contest once, but lost. I'm not sure if the fact that we didn't win made me feel better or worse.

Anyway, we finally decided to replace the worst boards, sand it down, and paint it. Phillip rented a floor sander from Home Depot and got the floorboards done in pretty good time, but it's taking forever to do the railings. There are just so many surfaces to do.

Luckily we have a couple of hand sanders and a lot of kids, so on a good day we can have two of them going continuously.

Wish I had taken a "before" picture for comparison but I always forget that part. I'm too excited to jump in and get rid of the ugly.

If the weather cooperates this weekend, I think we should be able to get the railings all done. Maybe. 

But as I said to Phillip after surveying our hard work at the end of a long day, this seems like an awful lot of work just to make the deck look slightly less bad. 

—7—

On the way to my 13-year-old's violin lesson, a crazy double rainbow (what does it mean?) appeared in the sky.

The main one was definitely the brightest rainbow I'd ever seen, and when the trees cleared we could see it arcing all the way across the sky from one end to the other.

The real thing was more vivid than this photo, I'd wager it has something to do with our dirty windshield.

And a minute later, the whole huge impressive thing suddenly disappeared and was gone.

I'm sure there's a good metaphor in there somewhere.

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