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!

Click to Share: