Friday, September 20, 2019

7 Quick Takes about Ways to Wear a Dress, Copious Amounts of Trips to the Hardware Store, and Motherhood in a Nutshell

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

1


When my daughter picked up my phone, the Pinterest app randomly opened up and the article "12 Ways to Wear 1 Dress" caught her eye.

She was pretty disappointed and a little confused when she clicked through and just saw options for layering clothes on top of it.

"Those aren't ways to wear a dress, That's just wearing different stuff with it!" She complained.

I agreed, the title was maybe a little clickbait-y.

Then we had fun thinking of how we would've written it differently, featuring 12 actually different ways to wear the dress: around your neck like a scarf, as a turban on your head, upside down like a pair of parachute pants...

I never before in my life entertained the idea of being a fashion blogger, but I see now that it could be kind of fun.


2


Do you remember when people used to say "Let's not and say we did?"

That's become one of my go-to phrases with the kids lately.

At dinner the other day, my son voiced yet another ridiculous/dangerous idea and I responded, "Let's not and say we did."

Usually he just takes that as a 'no' and moves on, but this time he paused and said, "Well, I'd still get in trouble for it, so that's not a very good idea."

"You should do it and then say you didn't!" the 7-year-old piped up.

"But then you'd get in trouble for lying," the 13-year-old pointed out. "So you should probably just do it and say you did."

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?

3


I was at the hardware store earlier this week picking out some paint for a smallish project I'm working on.

It took me forever to find the right color and when I found a swatch I liked the employee told me it was only available in the super-fancy expensive brand.

I gestured to the promo flyer beside the register and joked, "Maybe I should just come back on Thursday and order it like a pirate."

Arr matey! Be this paint water- or latex-based?

The employee, who was apparently not that into his job, looked at me and deadpanned, "But is two bucks really worth your dignity?"

Okay, first of all, yes.

And second of all, don't you work here?

I laughed and asked, "If someone talks to you like a pirate do you have to answer like one?"

"They don't pay me enough for that," he said, handed me my quart of paint and a stirring stick. "Have a nice day."

4


We finally finished sanding the deck! 

Like most things in life, I'm glad I didn't know how much work it was going to be when I started, or I never would have done it.

Now we were ready to stain it.

Phillip picked out some stain at the store. The smallest can they had was a gallon so he bought one, brought it home to test it on a spare board we had in the garage, and saw that it looked like baby poop. I refused to entertain the idea of actually using it.

"Are you sure you want to get a different one?" Phillip asked. "It cost fifty dollars."

Ordinarily, I'm a very cheap person, but in this case I just said, "I will happily pay $50 for my deck not to look like diarrhea. Let's go back to the hardware store."

As we got out of the car in the parking lot, Phillip shook his head and said "They're going to know exactly what's going on here. Second trip to the hardware store in an hour but this time the wife comes marching in?"

Like they don't see that every blessed day of the week. No one even batted an eye at us.

5



So we had the stain, and on the way home it started to rain.

Then I started to cry.

Some people flip houses in their spare time, but I think of us as DIY-challenged, and this overwhelming project was not looking very doable.

We'd worked so hard to prepare the deck for staining, and every time it rained we had to wait another few days for it to dry out before we could do anything, and the way the weather was looking it didn't seem like we'd ever finish.

Phillip is a problem-solver, though, so he went back to the hardware store and got a huge tarp. Once the deck dried out from this rain, he explained, we'd cover it until the next sunny day so we could stain no matter what.

I was deep in a pit of existential despair by then, so trying to cheer me up, Phillip showed me the tarp's product label: "Look, it says right here that it's good for covering houses, trees, and giant cow turds."


It did make me feel a little better, if you're wondering how mature I am.

6


True to Phillip's word, on the next nice day we started staining.

Because we have about a million after-school activities every night of the week we didn't get started nearly as early as we'd like, and when we did start working the four oldest kids who could've actually been helpful were gone at various practices and appointments.

The only ones home were the 3- and 5-year-olds, who of course were very eager to "help."

But I can hardly take decorating the Christmas tree with them, letalone watch them slinging deck stain all over the place, so all I can say is thank goodness for YouTube and Shaun the Sheep.

7


People sometimes ask me to share my awesome parenting routines so I'll tell you how my 3-year old's naptime routine usually goes.

First, we read a book and then dim the lights and rock in the rocking chair. I tell him to be quiet while he talks to himself and wiggles around and knees me in the groin ten times until I yell and then we're both mad. Then I put him in his crib and tell him to go to sleep, and after I leave he crawls out and plays with toys for 45 minutes.

But on one particular day this week he was really tired, so he just snuggled his tiny body up against me in the rocking chair and went to sleep.

I was smelling his precious little head and thinking, "I love being a mom so much, this is the best job in the wor-" and then he farted in my lap.

Which is probably the most accurate description of motherhood that has ever been written.

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Your last take made me laugh out loud. Such an accurate and fitting metaphor for motherhood!

Unknown said...

That let's not phrase was one of my dads favorite phrases. Also when asked where are we going he would reply "Crazy...wanna come?" So now you can tell the kids they are following in their great granddad's steps. Though I am not sure he would ever have analyzed all the options of using it that they did@

Tracy said...

Lol- they’re hay/straw bales for cows.

Jenny Evans said...

I thought it was an ox pulling some logs or something. Shows what I know.