Friday, February 19, 2021

7 Quick Takes about Hot Dates, Making Calculus a Little More Challenging, and the Grocery Store Bus

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

1


My dad sent me this COVID meme and I couldn't relate more:


'Normal' is just a setting on the washing machine, folks.

2


Phillip and I had a belated Valentine's Day date. We went to Kohl's, dropped off some Amazon returns, looked at a jacket we didn't buy... it was wild.

No really, we did have fun. We also talked over take-out and some interesting flavored sodas we picked up at a specialty grocery store. And I want to tell you about the fanciness level of this specialty grocery store. 

First of all, the only thing it sold was kombucha. We passed at least three coolers full of it scattered throughout the store and had to look really hard to find anything else (not counting the entryway display of bottled organic tangerine juice on a bed of ice and lettuce leaves.) 

Second of all, there was a room off to the side called the "fine wine room." I realize some grocery stores do have a separate alcohol section, but the fact that it was more tastefully decorated than the nicest house I've ever been in (there may have been actual framed artwork on the walls) made me laugh.

We just did not belong there at all. We finally found something that wasn't kombucha, paid for it, then hightailed it back to our minivan and tried not to hit all the Lexuses in the parking lot on our way out.

3


My 16-year-old is taking a calculus class through concurrent enrollment at a university. I'm pretty impressed, because there's no way I could pass this class. Especially when her quizzes look like this:


Apparently the question didn't load right and when she refreshed the page it gave her actual numbers instead of an error message, which made the question slightly easier to answer.

4


My latest baking fail was a doomed loaf of banana bread that my kids called "the banana brick." 

Apparently there was a baking soda malfunction (I maintain that the child I was making it with forgot to put any in, but let's not point fingers here) so the loaf ended up about 2 inches tall and the approximate density of a neutron star.

The most surprising thing was that it actually all got eaten. Although much more slowly than a normal loaf of banana bread would ever last in this house.

5


Do you remember SparkNotes, the summarize-a-book cheat site we might have been known to visit when we were writing high school essays? 

Well, now that I'm the one grading my homeschooled high schooler's essays, I'm back again (well-played, karma) and I noticed a new addition: the delightful fun articles on the side. Except they aren't about celebrities and things I don't care about: they're about books! I could probably waste a lot of time here. 

I recommend you start with "11 Quotes That Sum Up the Entire Book," and see where the rabbit hole takes you from there.

6


My teenagers work at two different grocery stores, and lately they've both been scheduled to work 3 PM shifts on five out of the seven days of the week. 

We worked out a system where they'd put on their respective uniforms and pile in the van, and then I'd drive around like a bus dropping off grocery store employees. (They rotated which one arrived early and which one arrived on time each day.)

I feel like I should now add "bus driver" to my already impressive resume.

7


I've taken kids to a total of 4 dentist appointments this week, and I really struggle with making decisions about their dental care. Especially when you go in for a cleaning and they tell you there's a cavity in one of the teeth, even though it isn't bothering the child at all.

I rarely have this problem at the pediatrician's office. In fact, I can count on zero fingers the number of times I've taken a child in for his yearly check-up and found out he had a broken arm.

Click to Share:
Unremarkable Files

2 comments:

Ann-Marie Ulczynski said...

Yay for the banana bread being eaten. The first time my eldest made banana bread solo she misread tsp and thought it was cup, so added a cup of baking soda and a cup of salt. It smelled amazing.

PurpleSlob said...

#1- Bwahahaha! I read a book over 30 years ago, named that!!
#2- Inquiring minds wanna know- What flavor were the sodas??
#3- my kinda class!! NOT
#4- So that was good, right? A sliver thin slice that satisfies, and you have snacks for days! Win/Win!!
#5- We actually had to read a real book! Cliff notes- my bff in both HS, and college!! All ya needed to know in 1 thin volume! Oooh, I'll go check it out! THX!
#6- How many months away is driving alone age? Please divide by the additional cost of insurance, multiplied by the increased anxiety level!
#7-So funny!! I had a broken tooth back in Nov. And another one broke this month. Of course, my huge fillings are 5 decades older than your children, so there's that. I'm strting a lottery pool on which one is next. Want in? The prize is a shadow box framed part of the tooth!