7 Quick Takes about Pomegranate Disasters, Things We're Thankful For, and Weird Stuff Your Dog Doesn't Want for Christmas

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

—1—

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. Ours was... strange. Like pretty much everyone else we know, half of our family is sick. So Thanksgiving day for me meant mostly lying in bed being even more useless than usual (Phillip is the holiday cook around here, so my usual Thanksgiving job is to do the dishes and stay out of his way.)

It was also different because two of our six kids were missing. Our oldest is away at college in Utah, and we flew the 16-year-old out to see her and spend Thanksgiving with her and the extended family we have out there. At least they escaped the plague that is circulating around the house here.

—2—

We always have pomegranate seeds on our Thanksgiving table, and my 11-year-old volunteered to prep the pomegranates on Thursday morning and take out all the seeds. It's kind of a time-consuming, messy job, but she came in to my room where I was resting in bed to report that she was finished. 

"Did you clean everything up?" I asked.

"I think so."

"Good. Can you bring me a few pomegranate seeds? Not a bunch, just a few. Like, five."

"Okay," she said with a smile and a shrug. "But you're going to have to lie in bed for five months, then."

I think that girl's been reading too much Percy Jackson.

Oh, and when 11-year-olds tell you that they "think" they cleaned up, this is what they mean: 

Yep, everything checks out here.

—3—

Instead of the dreaded go-around-the-table-and-say-what-you're-thankful-for ritual we do every year before Thanksgiving dinner, we added a twist to make it a little more fun for everyone. I got this idea from my friend Kimberly.

The first person has to say something they're thankful for that starts with A, then B, all the way to Z, and just like the picnic game you have to repeat all the previous ones before adding a new one to the list.

The answers we got this year were definitely much more creative. Some of the notable things we're thankful for included "Amazon Prime" and "Never having been robbed."

—4—

The holiday gift catalogs have started to arrive in the mail by the truckload. I flip through them out of curiosity sometimes, and this page caught my eye.

It's all pet items, like a fun kitty condo and an automatic pet food dispenser and a... fur-baby carrier?

This is not necessary. This was never necessary.

I just want to know why. No 4-legged animal wants to sit like that, with its legs sticking straight out in front of it. Is this because of those toddler leash backpacks? Or is it because of dog strollers? Are we just collectively confused as a culture now about what's a dog and what's a baby? What is happening?

—5—

Lately I've been getting ads on my phone for word games and puzzle games that are clearly marketed to adults, but they're so simple a 4-year-old could do them. I think Google Ads must think I have dementia. 

After a while, though, I realized something: some of those dumb games would be perfect for learning a second language. My favorite that I've been playing a lot is 4 Fotos 1 Palabra (the Spanish version of 4 Pics 1 Word).

All 4 pictures have one word in common.

It's good for vocab recall, learning new words (I cheat using Google Translate) and learning Spanish homonyms. Did you know that cola means not just 'tail,' but also 'glue' and 'line of people'? I do now.

—6—

My kids' school sent out a great email. The message was adapted from some advice from an Olympic gymnast and basically said: don't let your kids quit something because they had a bad day.

"When something is hard, our brain and body resist because they want us to be comfortable," the email read. "If your kids want to quit an activity, tell them that they can — but not yet. When they have a day where they are successful and they still want to quit, then they can quit. This approach normalizes struggle."

I love everything about that message.

—7—

My 6-year-old saw me pulling out my sewing machine to hem a pair of pants and got really excited.

"Can I help?" he asked eagerly. "I can help even though I don't know anything about ironing... I mean knitting... I mean... what is that?"

What he lacks in skill he makes up for in enthusiasm, so I let him wind a new bobbin for me and gently told him I was going to take over from there. I'll show him how to iron or knit or whatever later.

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