Friday, September 27, 2019

7 Quick Takes about Not Being Jealous, A Place Where All the Cords Can Be Hidden, and the Irony of Having Little Helpers

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

1


Phillip's been out of town for a while, so I'm running on fumes (because I don't go to bed when left to my own devices) and starting to figure out how to logistically do everything solo.

At first, I relied on sheer memory and ended up forgetting a child's practice or appointment or school open house every day. (Of course, there were 100 other things I did remember each day so frankly, I was still impressed with myself.)

Recently, I've started setting 10-15 alarms per day on my phone to remind me of literally every single time-sensitive thing I have to do in the next 24 hours. It's weird, but it works.

2


Phillip went kayaking and camping on some island with a group of guys from church.

I assume he had fun on his manventure, but we didn't really get to talk about it because he came home for just long enough to make dinner, do his laundry, and take out the trash before he left again for a work trip.

He didn't mean to schedule the trips back-to-back like that, but it just kind of happened.

Usually I feel sort of jealous when he travels because he eats out at fancy restaurants and stays in nice places, but then he texted me from his hotel in Norway and I was like, "You know what? I'm good."


His legs didn't even fit on the mattress.

3



I've been on the hunt for a place to charge all of our devices.

Theoretically, there is a designated space for them in an upper kitchen cupboard, but it's really a terrible solution. It quickly gets so disorganized in there that no one wants to use it, so they just dangle cords down to the counter and hook them up to a tangled heap of phones and smartwatches that I have to look at all day.

About a year ago I got so sick of looking at it I threw everything in a trash bag, and while it felt therapeutic the devices came creeping back out and are once again driving me crazy.

I see charging stations online, but I want a solution that doesn't require me to look at any cords! I want that mess hidden.

Recently some friends were getting rid of old furniture and asked if I wanted anything. I looked in their garage and knew I'd found my solution when I saw this:


It's smaller than it looks in the picture, only two feet tall. The small drawers are perfect for devices, all we need to do is drill some holes in the back and it will be a sweet charging station with NO VISIBLE CORDS.

After some paint and new knobs, it looks pretty good:


I'm still not 100% sure where we're going to put it, but whatever happens it will be better than the devices on the counter. Or the trash bag.

4


The little kids were obsessed with helping me paint. Bless their hearts, but I was obsessed with doing it myself after they were asleep precisely so they couldn't "help."


I let them put on some primer (for about as long as it takes to take a picture and say "Stop waving that around, you're going to get paint everywhere! Put the paint can lid down. Don't wipe your hands on your- stop! I said don't wipe your hands on your shirt! Or your pants! STOP!")

One of the cruelest ironies of motherhood is that the times kids are the most excited to help you is when they're too little to actually be helpful.

5


In other painting news, I finished the deck! 

You have no idea how excited I am about this. All by ourselves, we sanded and put two coats of stain on every inch of that huge old deck and all 96 of its railings!

Painting railings, as you know, was invented by the devil and takes forever. Especially when there are 96 of them.

Figure 1a: a child enough to be helpful.

The deck looks fantastic now; my only regret is that I didn't remember to take a picture of how terrible it looked before we started sanding.

6


A friend needed someone to drive her to surgery and back, so I volunteered.

I panicked when I realized I'd committed to a 6-hour day away from home when Phillip was out of town, but it happened to be a half-day from school so my 15-year-old took over for me and it was a seamless transition.

My friend's procedure started around lunchtime, so I walked a few blocks to get Mediterranean food and ate it in the park while reading a book. Totally uninterrupted.

It was really weird, knowing for a fact that no one was going to ask me to get up and take them to the bathroom three times or demand a bite of my food and then tell me it tasted gross.

After lunch I seriously took a nap on a bench like a hobo and loved every minute of it.

7


One of my responsibilities at church is to help organize and run weekly youth activities for the young women in the ward.

This week I taught them some hairstyle hacks (I used to do my girls' hair all the time when they were little, and I brought my little book with pictures of all the hairstyles for the youth to look at.)

The woman who helps me with these activities also has a big family, although I think she actually knows what she's doing because her kids are older than mine.

We didn't have our kids with us at the activity, of course, but at one point I looked over and randomly realized that between the two of us, she and I have fifteen children.

Good thing they're all so awesome.

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1 comment:

Ann-Marie Ulczynski said...

That hotel room is crazy! I love your cabinet. That’s a fantastic idea. Please post a picture and a recap after you use it for awhile.