7 Quick Takes about Inventing New Punchlines, Facebook Marketplace Etiquette, and How to Fit Exercise Into a Busy Weekday Morning

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

—1—

My 9-year old has been coming home telling jokes she reads on the backs of the school milk cartons. Her latest was, "What starts with 'T,' ends with 'T,' and has 'T' in it?"

The answer, of course, is "teapot." Because it's full of tea. Get it?

The really hilarious part, though, was when she tried the joke on her 7-year-old brother: "What starts with 'T,' ends with 'T,' and has 'T' in it?" 

He thought about it for about two seconds and answered, "Tater tot."

—2—

The most exciting project I've completed this week was redoing the side of this nasty cabinet in our kitchen. 

It's MDF covered with adhesive wood grain patterned paper, which had been thoroughly decimated by years of hanging and removing various chore charts, behavior charts, and kid schedules for the last 10 years.

Wood grain paper this size is expensive, and I don't love the look of it anyway, so we decided to get creative. Also, our kitchen never had a very good place for our broom and dustpan, so we made one.

We'll see how it looks one this broom has been broken in, because real working brooms aren't pretty. But life is an experiment, and we'll see how this one goes.

—3—

PSA for people on Facebook Marketplace: if you see someone giving away a free outdoor porch swing, don't say you'll take it, come to the house and dismantle it, then change your mind and drive away leaving a pile of scrap metal in their yard. 

It's rude. 

Especially if you've borrowed the homeowner's wrench to do so.

—4—

How was your Father's Day? We've settled into a pretty comfortable routine.

At our house, Phillip always gets the same thing: after lunch he gets to take a nap while we go clean his car. We take out the trash, vacuum the interior, wash the windows, polish the dashboard, and leave him an air freshener and some gum.

Saving the small nooks and crannies for the 5-year-old who can fit in the trunk.

Phillip came out to admire our handiwork and that's when we revealed the real surprise: we opened the garage door and told him he could park inside the garage for the first time in two years because we'd cleaned that out, too. It was a pretty momentous day.

—5—

My kids' bathroom sink was clogged again (thanks to certain girls in our house with ridiculously thick two-foot-long hair who shan't be named) and instead of sending Phillip up there with a drain snake like I usually do, I decided to do it myself.

It was disgusting. I may have pulled a slimy black cat out of there, I'm not really sure. I was bewildered wondering why in the world Phillip ever agrees to doing this when I ask him. But a funny thing happened: by the time I'd finished the sink and moved on to the bathtub drain, I was almost used to it.

The other day, I had to deal with a household poop accident which I haven't had to do in years, and how I reacted showed me just how out of practice I was. So lesson learned: if you think something is really gross, you probably just don't do it enough.

—6—

The kids' last day of school was Monday, and it started off with a bang. While Phillip was getting ready for work, I took his car to drop the 7th grader off at school, not knowing it was on its last drop of gas. I made it to the school okay, but ran out of gas on the way to the gas station afterward.

Luckily, I was only a mile away from our house so I could walk home. (Unluckily, I was wearing PJ pants and dollar store flip-flops so both my pride and my feet hurt by the time I got there.)

When I walked in the door, Phillip was all ready for work and waiting for the car because I'd been gone so long. "Where were you?" he asked.

"Taking a brisk walk."

—7—

Now that things are starting to open up, the kids are starting to get colds again. Up until recently, we hadn't been sick in over a year!

I was out late taking the 15-year-old clothes shopping one night and in the morning, the 9-year-old (who currently has a scratchy throat) told me indignantly, "Daddy didn't say goodnight to me last night!"

"He didn't?"

"No, he just gave a no-arm hug before bed 'cuz I'm sick!" Then in practically the same breath, she asked, "How come when we get sick, Daddy never gets sick?"

I don't know, it's a real mystery.

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