7 Quick Takes about Baking Dish Fails, the Future of Flying Cars, and Business Names that Will Definitely Get You Sued

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

—1—

What happened? It was summer and when I blinked it turned into winter. In the same week, I put away the beach towels and took out the kids' gloves and hats.

Freezing my rear end off at my son's soccer game on Saturday morning, though, I realized something: masks in the winter are going to keep my face SO WARM. 

Silver linings, people.

—2—

Four of my kids are doing hybrid learning at the public school. Last week, they started online learning and this week they had their first few days of in-person school.

They claim it's not that different. According to my 12-year-old, "School is basically the same, we just stay apart and wear masks. You kind of forget you're wearing them after a while."

All I can say is that I'm glad it's not in-person every day. Getting everyone up, fed, dressed, giving the two big kids rides to school and getting the two younger ones on the bus is EXHAUSTING. Doing it 5 days a week is just excessive.

—3—

One hard thing about having a big family is answering the same question over and over. On Thursday a glass baking dish shattered in our oven while I was making dinner, which meant I had to hold a press conference about it afterward for every single person in the house.

By the time the last few stragglers came in asking what happened, all I could manage was an irritated, "It's broken glass, don't look at it and don't talk to me about it, let's eat what's left of our dinner."

And then there was cleanup. All of the sauce had splashed to the bottom of the oven when the dish broke, and then it cooled to a nice hard cement crust with shards of broken glass embedded in it. Cleaning it up was by far the least enjoyable way I've spent an evening this week.

Although if I'm being honest, who knows when the oven would've gotten cleaned otherwise?

—4—

I'm still learning how to use our minivan. I'm not used to the touchscreens and backup cameras and new-fangled gadgetry cars come with nowadays. 

My gearshift is actually a knob that you turn (FYI, car manufacturers: not a good idea because in the two months we've owned the car I've already had a passenger mistake it for the volume knob and switch gears while I'm driving.) 

The knob has five positions: 'park,' 'reverse,' 'neutral,' 'drive,' and 'L.'

Sometimes the kids will ask me what 'L' stands for. I'm not 100% sure, so I just tell them it stands for 'liftoff.' 

Someday when we're really late for something important, we'll try it out.

—5—

My mom sent us an Edible Arrangements, just because. It was such a nice surprise! We had it for a treat after Family Home Evening, which is like a weekly family devotional we do in our religion.

We talked about the second Article of Faith, and then we dug in:

The amount of stickiness my kids got on the floor and table after this impressed even me, and I've seen some things.

We were admiring how the different shapes were cut and one daughter commented, "We could make these, you know."

"What would we call our business?" I asked.

"Arranged Edibles," my 16-year-old suggested.

"Edible Rearrangements," my 14-year-old chimed in.

I think we might have some sort of copyright infringement lawsuit in our future.

—6—

Three of the kids are doing soccer this season, but with restrictions. They wear masks, play intra-town instead of against other schools, and they have to bring a "COVID card" to every practice and game.

The COVID card is a little index card with a checkbox of Coronavirus symptoms, and a parent must sign and date it to certify that their child is symptom-free. Theoretically, this should help limit the spread of the virus.

We keep a stack of them in a Ziploc bag near the door, and whenever I reach into it my first instinct is to lick my finger to get just one instead of a few stuck together. 

I'm trying. I promise I am.

—7—

The kids have been listening to a lot of "trap remixes" on YouTube (which sound to me like what I'd call "techno remixes," but I'm old so what do I know?)

They've started kind of an informal contest to see who can find the most bizarre one, the song you'd never, ever in a million years think "I definitely need to add a beat drop to this!" 

So far, it's a tie between Baby Shark and Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. The Internet is a weird, weird place.

My teenager also downloaded a remix app on her phone and is having fun ruining all my songs on the radio in the car by putting random techno sounds to them. Honestly, it reminds me a little of this:

Have a good weekend, guys!

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7 Quick Takes about Magical Mint Snowflake, A Different Kind of School Year, and Household Explosions

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

—1—

Phillip's team at work has been working really hard lately, so he planned a fun activity to say "thanks." He told them all to go buy a flavor of ice cream that they wouldn't ordinarily buy, and set up an online team game of some sort to play while they ate it.

And remember, the instructions were to buy a flavor you wouldn't ordinarily buy, so this is what Phillip got for himself:

The funny part was that Phillip bought this and only this at the store, and he was all by himself, so it looked pretty clear what was going on: a 39-year-old man had such an intense craving for Frozen II Magical Mint Snowflake ice cream, he'd gotten up and gone to the grocery store for the express purpose of buying an entire gallon of it.

Actually, it was pretty tasty. Now that I've had it, that would be understandable.

—2—

I visited my friend Casey's garden for some help with mine. She's got a beautiful garden that she's built little by little, learning by doing, and the best thing (in my opinion) is how she tries to do everything at low or no cost.

She built her vegetable garden fence with fallen branches from the yard, grows strawberries in some crates her husband found on the side of the road, and relocates plants from elsewhere on her property to live in her garden if she thinks they'll look good there.

"See those flowers?" she said, pointing to some blossoms I'd admired earlier. "I grow those from seeds I save from the previous year. I originally cut the dead flowers off some plants in a McDonald's parking lot."

When I grow up, I think I want to be Casey.

—3—

On my birthday, I got new laundry hampers for our master bathroom and just loved how they made the place look.

I loved it so much I took this picture and sent it to my mom. 

Fast-forward a few months, and this is how it looks now:

Not pictured: the gaping hole in the wall left over from a DIY emergency plumbing repair a few weeks ago.

To be perfectly honest, though, it probably looked like this almost immediately. I was just too frazzled to notice.

—4—

School started this week, and our first day of school pictures did not look at all like I'd imagined 6 months ago:

I have no idea why his iPad is propped up on a 20-lb bag of rice. I just live here.

Phillip works from home, my teenager is doing some online university courses while homeschooling, and 4 of my kids are doing remote learning three days a week with our public school, meaning that I'm in the background of someone's Zoom call literally all day.

As my 16-year-old put it, I'm like a Yeti but not rare.

—5—

Other than furtively getting dressed in the bathroom hoping one of my kids doesn't wander in with a tech issue and show me to their class half-naked, I'm actually really liking our current school setup.

I was really dreading how this was going to go, but the 4 younger kids doing the public school's hybrid learning plan seem to be learning and having fun, and I like that they're constantly popping in for lunch and on breaks (even though it means I get nothing else done.)

And my 16-year-old, who's homeschooling this year, is reveling in the freedom of determining her own schedule. When she got hungry at 11 yesterday and asked, "Can I eat lunch this early?" I just shrugged and said "You're homeschooled, you can do whatever you want." I think I heard the Hallelujah Chorus playing inside her brain.

—6—

Phillip has gotten into making fermented sodas. I try not to know too much about the process, but he makes a starter microbe mix out of ginger, adds juice to the bottle after a couple of days, and then in a few more days the "bug" has eaten the sugar and turned it into a sparkling carbonated kind of drink. 

Anyway, doing this is a learning curve, and there was a mishap where one of the glass bottles exploded while sitting on the counter.

Luckily, my 16-year-old and I who were in the room didn't get hit by any flying shards of glass, but we were picking them up in the mudroom 10 feet away and the room was basically covered in sticky juice residue.

When we called Phillip in to help with the cleanup effort, he took one look around and told me, "You're welcome for the Take."

—7—

My 14-year-old recently picked up The Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook at the library.

Which is ironic, because the whole premise of the book is that they were, you know, hungry.

I've seen things like unofficial Harry Potter cookbooks before, which makes sense because they actually do mention lots of different kinds of foods, drinks, and desserts in the Harry Potter series. But what could be in here?

So I flipped open to a random recipe and saw this:

I've read the books and yes, this is something they probably would've made from the squirrels Katniss hunted in the woods. But surely the 'squirrel' part of the title was just for show, and the actual ingredients were normal things you can buy at the grocery store, right?

First ingredient: 2-3 pounds squirrel.

I have so many questions. Is this recipe assuming that you hunt your own squirrels, or that you somehow have a squirrel meat supplier somewhere? Is that a thing people have? How many squirrels is 2-3 pounds? Does that include the bones? How do you clean a squirrel, anyway? Why am I still reading this recipe??

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7 Quick Takes about Bad Concepts for Picture Books, Starting Up the Crazy Train, and the Secret to Looking Youthful

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

—1—

The keypad on my phone is the worst. If I can't use speech-to-text, it takes me longer to fix all the spelling errors than it does to type the text. At first I thought it was just me, but other family members have commented on how impossible it is to text from my phone.

And now that I've spelled things wrong so many times, on the off-chance I spell it right then autocorrect changes it... to the misspelling.

The other day I was running errands and realized there was no way I was going to be able to get home and feed everyone in a timely manner, so I shot Phillip a quick text:

—2—

On Saturday, we went to the beach and since we'd be in the car for a little while, I grabbed some picture books to dole out to the younger kids while Phillip drove.

"Can I have that one? What's it called?" a small person requested from the backseat, pointing at the one on top of the stack on my lap.

"Diary of a Worm," I replied, handing it back to the second row of seats.

Phillip eye's widened in horror. "DIARRHEA OR WORMS?!?"

I almost died laughing at what he thought he'd heard me say, especially since the novel I've been reading just had the main character suffering from a horrible stomach ailment in Cuba and wondering this exact thing. 

Diarrhea or Worms? really does sound like the title of the worst Choose Your Own Adventure book ever.

I will never read this the same way again.

—3—

After 6 months of quiet, this week started the wheels of the crazy train have started to roll again.

School starts next week, my daughter started riding lessons, and someone in our house has had soccer practice every night this week. I was trying to find a free evening when the missionaries from my church could come over for a visit and while I was scanning the calendar, unable to find a free night I suddenly realized: I remember this.

Not having time to cook dinner, letalone eat together. 

Feeling like I'm herding cats because everyone's got their own agenda. 

Just being home long enough to throw our crap in the door before we leave again, and the house looks like a bomb went off because I'm too busy to follow everyone around reminding them to clean up after themselves.

I miss quarantine already.

—4—

School starts next week, and our school is following a hybrid model. The student body is split into two halves and using the school on a rotating basis, so my kids will be doing "remote learning" on the days when other students are in the classroom, and vice versa.

I'm still fuzzy on the details (so I'm hoping I'm  just understanding them wrong,) but it sounds to me like there's going to be a webcam in the back of each classroom, and on remote days you sit on your computer for hours watching the teacher teach the group that's there that day. It sounds mind-numbingly boring.

After her high school orientation, I asked my 14-year-old what she thinks about how this school year is going to go. She said she's "optimistically sure this will never work."

Actually, I know exactly what she means, because that's how I feel. I mean, it sounds so impossibly awful, it's got to be better than that, right??

So anyway, we're both optimistically sure this will never work. Also known as "in denial."

—5—

I missed the entirety of this, but apparently we had a visitor while I was out (see Take #1.)

Photos courtesy of my 16-year-old.

When the missionaries came over later that evening and my kids told them "There was a bear in our yard!" the one from Utah was like, "WHAT!?!" and the one from Alaska was like, "Oh," just as serenely as if we'd been discussing the weather. (They have a lot of bears in Alaska.)

For those of you who don't know the bear poem ("if it's brown, lie down; if it's black, fight back,") black bears are pretty timid and not usually very dangerous. The mean kind are grizzlies, which don't live in New England. Black bears are generally scared of people and will go away if you make some noise.

(Obviously, everyone was indoors when this happened. When my kids are outside, they're so loud I'm sure every bear within 100 miles is cowering in fear.)

As much as we love our suet birdfeeder, though, we're going to have to take it down for a little while. Because that's why this bear decided to come pay us a visit.

The kids report that the bear then fell off the retaining wall he was perching on to do this, which I really wished I could have seen.

—6—

One summer project we're trying to finish is repainting the girls' bedroom. When we moved here ten years ago, I did it bubble-gum pink and apparently that's not cool when you're 16. Or whatever.

The girls chose a color scheme and we went to the paint store for a sample. I was standing at the counter with my two teenage daughters and the cashier asked, "Are you three sisters?"

I just laughed politely, figuring the guy was either joking or thinking "That's one exhausted-looking old lady, let's give her a thrill." 

But then he persisted. He gestured to me and said, "Are you mom, then?"

I was confused. He actually thought we were all sisters? Listen dude, I feel like I'm 150 years old most of the time. Surely that shows.

After we left, I asked my daughters what just happened, and one pointed out "Well, we are wearing masks so 70% of our faces are covered." 

Okay, I guess that makes more sense.

—7—

The other project we've been doing is clearing out the basement. Random stuff collects and possibly multiplies down there, and we need to get rid of it if this "finishing the basement" thing is really going to happen.

One item down there is an old ping-pong ball table, in such sad shape we can't really even give it away. I wanted to pay to dispose of it at the transfer station, but Phillip said he could take it apart and hack it up so we could just put it in trash bags for free.

A little while later, I went to check on his progress and he'd made a desk out of it.

Seriously.

He said he was going to cut it up and throw it away, but then got to thinking about how we probably needed another study desk for the kids, so he made this:

Waste not, want not.

I love that man.

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7 Quick Takes about Stadium Seating, Planning Ahead for Cheese Time, and Secretly Thinking Things Are a Little Weird

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

—1—

I'm pleased to announce that we got our new couches out of the garage and moved them into their permanent home in the basement!

Our eventual goal is to finish the basement and make it into a comfortable family movie-watching area, and the couches are fitting nicely into the plan. 

Right now, they are both facing the TV, one up on cinder blocks behind the other to create stadium seating, and it's pretty awesome. 

The kids are already calling it "the home theater," and while it's still got a long way to go, I'm starting to be able to see it, too.

—2—

My 4- and 6-year-olds have been a little out of control lately, so I felt like they needed more structure at home.

I made a little schedule I could stick on the fridge and rearrange with magnets, to help redirect their attention to activities that aren't running around screaming and throwing a wet Pull-up at each other. 

At first, both boys were enthusiastically following along (outside time! story time! clean up time!) and the new schedule seemed to be working like a charm. And after only a few days, they already seemed significantly less feral.

Then my older kids took it upon themselves to take words from our magnetic poetry set and edit the schedule, making sure that everyone in the house lost all respect for it immediately.

 

After "bad time" and "hard time," at least we can all look forward to "be a pig time."

It was nice while it lasted. 

—3—

My 14-year-old had a violin recital but because of COVID, it was held in the yard outside her teacher's house, and everybody wore masks. 

I enjoyed listening to everyone, but every few minutes I would sneak glances at the parents sitting 6 feet apart across the lawn and picture the following whispered conversation with another mom:

Me: This is real life, right?

Her: Oh, yes. We're all totally cool with... [gesturing around] ... this. 

Me: Me, too. Me, too. For sure. I just wanted to make sure you didn't think it was weird, because I absolutely do not.

Her: Of course! This is so not weird for me. It's almost weird how not-weird it is, you know?

Me: I mean, I could see how some people might think it was a little bizarre, sitting in the yard watching your kid play Mozart in a surgical mask, but this is totally normal.

Her: Obviously. That's why we're all just clapping like it's any old recital that isn't weird at all.

Me: Right. Because it is.

Her: It so is.

Does anyone else ever feel like they need to do a secret sanity check when they're out in public? 

We need a code word to signal each other, something that means "I still remember what normal life was like before COVID-19." Give me a secret handshake or something. Let me know I'm not the only one.

—4—

I'm in the process of getting the kids' fall clothes out of the attic and seeing who fits into what.

I brought down a box for my 4-year-old that I thought would be the right size, but most of the pants were already too short.

"How did you get so big?" I asked him jokingly.

"Uhh... because I eat all my food and I'm 4?"

Fair enough.

—5—

Once upon a time, I taught myself how to knit. I knitted like crazy for a year and a half, and stopped when I had a baby and never started again. That baby is 6 now.

My daughter recently wanted to knit a scarf so I showed her how to get started, and it turns out that knitting is kind of like riding a bike. 

I was actually pretty impressed that I remembered how to do it, and now I really want to knit something. I need a project idea.

—6—

I took my teenager shopping and while she was looking at shoes, I kept busy browsing through a nearby rack of clothes. 

I found an outfit that amused me and brought it to her, holding it up and proudly announcing, "Gumby!"

Halloween is coming, ladies.

In response, she just stared at me blankly. It was like I'd strung together two complete nonsense syllables.

"Do you not know who Gumby is?"

Blank stare.

Several days later, I searched for "Gumby" on YouTube and my daughter noticed. "Hey, is that the guy who looks like that outfit you saw at the mall?"

I nodded.

After a few minutes of watching the video in silence, she said, "But he doesn't have any clothes."

—7—

On a walk downtown, my three youngest kids and I passed a monument to fallen firefighters. They stopped to look at it, walking all around the bronze statue of a uniformed firefighter and taking it in.

"This to remember firefighters who died putting out fires and saving people," I said, seizing this oh-so-teachable moment to discuss our community helpers.

"Look at his eyes!" My 8-year-old squealed. "They're so... creepy!"

"That's not exactly what—"

"Ooh, and he's got an axe to murder us!"

This was one of those times where you just sigh and wonder Should I even start to correct that or do I just accept it and move on?

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In Which I Try Not to Complain about Pit Toilets

When we reserved a site for our family camping trip, we couldn't be picky. Thanks to COVID, everyone is camping right now (it's the only way we can get out of our houses) and we'd waited until the last minute. 

The weather forecast wasn't looking good as the weekend drew near. The entire weekend had a 50% chance of rain, but we decided to forge ahead. We have a massive rain shelter and we've already lived through this and this, so I guess we figured it would be okay in the end.

Luckily, it was more than okay. The place was GORGEOUS. 

Our neighbors, who technically had the waterfront campsite, chickened out because of the weather forecast and didn't show up. So we had the view all to ourselves and spent a lot of time over there.

My daughter enjoying the view from our (neighbors') campsite.

As Chandler Bing would say, "Could this BE any more beautiful?"

Oh, Nature. You're such a drama queen sometimes.

The kids fished, even though it was the wrong time of day and none of us know how to fish. (The tackle came from Phillip's other life, when he had things like leisure time and hobbies.)

Phillip spent some time relaxing by the water. Later that afternoon, he retired to this spot to read Old Man and the Sea and neither of us said so but I think we both appreciated the irony.

About that weather forecast, though.

After we'd checked out the scenery and gotten our tent and shelter set up, it started raining, and after 45 minutes, I was no longer sure we'd made a wise choice. 

Just how long can 8 people huddle under a 10x20 foot tarp before they start to turn on each other?

Still in good spirits.

Since roasting hot dogs over the fire wasn't happening because of the rain, we made do with the camp stove.

Looks like a neighborhood barbecue but no, that's just dinner on a Tuesday for us.

It stopped raining an hour later and we explored more of the campground. The older kids and I walked down the road to the "remote sites," where we were met with another beautiful landscape.

Seriously. This is getting ridiculous.

Around this time, though, I made an unpleasant discovery.

The only bathroom facilities for miles around were pit toilets. The super-smelly kind with flies and a TMI visual overview of your fellow campers' digestive activity.

This information had not been shared with me beforehand. 

Whether it slipped Phillip's mind or it was deliberately withheld from me, I'm not sure. And it's probably better that I didn't know, because if I did I wouldn't have gone.

After S'mores and roasted Starburst that night (for the life of me I don't get the appeal of roasted Starburst, they taste the exact same to me but the kids swear they are amazing) we retired to our gigantic tent.

Nighttime was dicey, both because the 6-year-old was scared of the loons calling on the lake and also because of the Pull-ups. The two younger boys still wear them to bed at night and we'd forgotten to bring enough, so I lined them with paper towels and a prayer and hoped they'd last for both nights.

Someday, I'm going to miss coming up with ridiculous diaper improvisations in emergency situations. I've gotten so good at it over the last 16 years.

Hanging out in a rain jacket after the sun came out.

The next day, it rained again for about an hour while we played games under the picnic shelter, then we went for a hike.

Much ado was made about the rock balanced on another slab of rock at the end of the hike. Perhaps the trail guide talked it up too much and our expectations were too high. At any rate, the kids were thoroughly unimpressed and instead preferred the salamanders on the trail.

These guys were bright orange.

After the hike I went to nap in the tent (and by 'nap' I mean 'listen to the kids running around the campsite yelling with my eyes closed for 20 minutes,') and then we rented out a small fleet of kayaks and paddleboards. 

I was doubling in a kayak with the 4-year-old, who, let's be honest, was not the powerhouse rower between the two of us but he sure was cute.

The kids had fun navigating around interesting outcroppings of rocks in the water and jumping off their paddleboards. We could've stayed for longer, but renting out the equivalent of half the Spanish armada for an extra hour ain't cheap, so we headed back to shore.

Clear skies for the rest of the day. BBQ chicken and S'mores for dinner. The 6-year-old was even getting used to the sound of the loons at night. This trip was shaping up to be pretty good.

In the morning, we ate breakfast at our absent neighbor's campsite because it was prettier and we could, and instead of a tablecloth we had Baby Yoda drawn in the dew on the picnic table:

Packing up was the only part that didn't go so smoothly. It took forever. I watched our neighbors on the other side wake up, make a fire, cook breakfast, pack up, leave, and then the park ranger came to clean up their site for the next person... all while we were still packing up.

After we finally got everything in the van, we went on one last hike before leaving. This campground didn't have a beach for swimming but we'd discovered a secret one hidden off the side of a trail last night, just the perfect size for our family:

Having hiked 15 minutes to the beach, my 6-year-old felt that now it was the perfect time to inform me he needed to use the bathroom.

"Pee or poop?" I asked (because I learned a long time ago that saying "just go in the water" without clarifying whether it's #1 or #2 first can be a total disaster.)

"Poop."

Of course.

So I walked 15 minutes with him all the way back to the pit toilet at the trailhead, where he decided he didn't have to go, after all.

Back at the beach, my 16-year-old made a rainbow out of the rocks she found:

My 4-year-old played with a piece of driftwood he found shaped like a club, and my 6-year-old practiced his backfloat: 

Swimming lessons this summer were cancelled due to COVID but thanks to my supbar tutelage, he's been been making nearly perceptible improvements!

As we changed back into our clothes behind towels held by a family member and stopped for a snack break, my daughter picked up the box and said, "Wait, what are these people doing with their granola bars?"

Predicting the future and recording a Britney Spears cover? Applying pressure to a head would and radioing for help? These granola bars are so versatile!

Our best guess is that this is a stock image and for some reason, they decided to use their Photoshop skillz to replace the sunglasses and cell phone with Nature Valley bars. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

On the drive home it started pouring rain. We were hoping that our bedding, which was tied to the roof, would stay moderately dry until we got home (we couldn't find our car topper and improvised with a plastic mattress bag and duct tape) and miraculously, it did.

Even with the weather and the pit toilets, it was a great time and we all agreed we could have stayed an extra day. 

Although I will say that I've never enjoyed flushing a toilet so much as when we finally came home.

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