Friday, March 26, 2021

7 Quick Takes about a Thousand Things, the Cycle of Delinquency at the Library, and Discoveries on a Nature Hike

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

1


Our library started a puzzle exchange, where you can take or leave any puzzle on a table near the door. 

As a challenge I brought home this 1,000-piece puzzle and it's currently all over the dining room table while we work on it, just pushing it all to the inside of the table at mealtimes.


In our family we assign kitchen cleaning chores after dinner and now "clear the table" is everyone's absolute least favorite. It's almost guaranteed that someone will start whining, "But I don't wanna clear the table! There's, like, a thousand things on it!"

And for once, they're not exaggerating.

2


I didn't catch what started it, but I had to intervene in an altercation between my 4- and 6-year-olds. As far as I could tell, the 6-year-old was upset because his little brother accused him of "smelling like fart."

Forgetting the cardinal rule of parenting, which is never ask 'why' because it's the most pointless question of all the questions, I told the 4-year-old, "That wasn't very nice. Why did you say he smells like fart?"

Predictably, the answer came: "Because he does."

See?

3


Who likes to laugh and/or is hugely pregnant right now? It's been a while since I was carrying a little human, but this hilarious video from Dude Dad took me right back to those achy, itchy, edema-laden days. 


I think he did a spectacular job describing pregnancy, especially for someone who hasn't been through it personally but has only watched. Except for the ridiculous move at 1:35. I can't even do that when I'm not pregnant.

4


Parenting is tough because
 each child has an infinite number of needs, so even if you're doing a good job overall it's hard not to feel like a failure because you still see so many unmet needs glaring at you. 

My middle schooler has been struggling with online school, and talking about it at home hasn't been very fruitful, so I decided to sign up for spring conferences.

Our school district actually does student-led conferences, where the child fills out a survey about their school performance and leads a discussion based on that, with the teacher there just as a facilitator. I've actually never gone to one of these before, thinking, "I'll just talk to my kid at home without the intermediary, thankyouverymuch" but with the struggle it's been this year I felt like we needed to be there.

So I already felt sheepish going into the meeting, feeling like the fact I even needed to go to this conference was evidence of my failure.

When the conference started and my son had forgotten to fill out the questionnaire, that was just icing on the cake.

5


In other areas where I need to improve, I really have to get better about returning our library books on time. 

Particularly because the library quarantines your books for a week after you bring them back, which means that your account gets blocked and you can't renew anything you already have out.

Right now we have 27 overdues, which I took back to the library so our account gets unblocked, but while they sit in quarantine limbo a few dozen more are about to go overdue... I really can't see an end to this cycle, honestly. 

6


By and large, this has been kind of an annoying week. 

I'm doing things like rounding up overdue library books, sorting out a frozen credit card account due to suspected fraud (although I called and they can't figure out why the system flagged our account in the first place,) and filling out more paperwork than when we bought the house so my youngest can go to kindergarten in the fall.

So I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post, but this is just not an Instagrammable life over here right now.

7


At least I can throw some pictures of our latest hike on here, though. All living things are still looking pretty brown and dead, but the sun was out so we were excited to get outside.


My younger kids were also excited to see that some mature vandal had carved the word "poop" on a bench and they all took turns "sitting on poop."


It's the little joys in life, apparently.

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4 comments:

PurpleSlob said...

1000 pieces?? Y'all are ambitious!! I'm glad PP, and CC still think 50 is a challenge!

Overdue library books were the bane of my life, when I was going regularly. It's so much cheaper to just pay full price at the store! lol

sitting on the poop, in the fresh air! Ahhh, that's the life!
:)

Jenny Evans said...

PurpleSlob: The problem is, our library doesn't charge overdue fines which is enabling my already terrible track record of never returning books on time...

JP2GiannaT said...

As a third trimester pregnant lady...

Yeah. That's accurate.

Unknown said...

Definitely sounded like an annoying week! Did anyone think that maybe they were reading the word upside down and its actually dood? Of course sitting on a dood could also bring satisfaction to some!