7 Quick Takes about Being Smart, Fun Facts about Teddy Roosevelt, and Some Thoughts on Video Games

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

—1—

Our 19-year-old daughter is home from college for Christmas! We're having such a good time with her. Whenever someone wants to play catch or do some activity where they need a partner, she is the go-to around here.

One funny thing I overheard was when the 17-year-old was expressing some uncertainty about life after high school. The 19-year-old told her, "Look, literally the only good thing about being a teenager is that your parents cook for you. That's it. Everything else about being an adult is way better."

I'm happy that she's happy with adulthood, but having been in charge of making dinner for 20+ years, I think she's understating what a huge deal it is to never have to worry about what's in your fridge or how it's going to turn into a meal every day. 

—2—

Christmas Eve and Christmas were basically perfect. It started out a little rocky, because my alarm didn't go off in the morning and getting 8 people ready for church in 20 minutes looks like a scene from Home Alone.

But other than that, it was great. We delivered cookies to the neighbors. We drove around looking at Christmas lights. That night we drank egg nog and watched a video about the Nativity.

On Christmas morning, Phillip surprised me with a vacuum so powerful that it sucked one of the ornaments off the tree and I got him a wedge pillow for his acid reflux. (Tell me you've been married for 20 years without telling me you've been married for 20 years.)

That night we taped glow sticks to the two youngest kids and blasted dance music through the window.

All in all, it was a great two days.

—3—

Each of the kids gets one Santa present, in addition to what's in their stockings. My 7-year-old got this game called {affiliate link} Flipslide, which is kind of like a cross between Simon and a Rubix cube. He was obsessed with it and played it all day long.

"He seems like he'll be good at chess," my 17-year-old remarked. Then she turned to me and said, "Why are we not smart? We're the only two dumb ones in this house!"

I wasn't offended, though, I actually know exactly what she means. She and I both have a great deal of emotional intelligence and creative vision, but our brains just don't seem to be wired for STEM applications.

—4—

The day after Christmas was beautiful, so we went for a hike.

This idyllic scene was completely candid. It only lasted for a moment, but it did happen spontaneously.

A few years ago, we stopped giving physical presents to our kids and do experience gifts for Christmas instead, so we had planned to go indoor mini golfing afterward. But the hike took longer than we expected and we ended up postponing it.

—5—

We've spent the rest of the week working through more experience gifts. On Wednesday Phillip took the boys to an American Ninja Warrior-type course, and today he took the teenagers axe throwing. 

Thursday was an indoor ropes course. I was standing in line, watching 6-year-olds run up there and thinking I was going to be too old for this, but when I got up there I stayed on the lower level and was still scared out of my mind.

Phillip hides it well, but he really hates heights. If I look at the selfie my daughter took of the two of them just afterward, I can zoom in and see in his eyes that his soul had temporarily left his body. 

But at least 4 out of the 6 kids really seemed to enjoy it.

—6—

Phillip has been reading this book about Theodore Roosevelt and sharing what he's learned with us. 

While we were taking a hike, he told us about how Roosevelt used to take his kids on "point-to-point scrambles" to toughen them up. They had to reach a point off in the distance in a straight line, and weren't allowed to go around any obstacles: if there was a tree they had to climb it, if there was mud they had to go through it, and if there was a pond they had to swim it.

"Ugh," my 17-year-old said, "What about their poor mother who had to wash their clothes afterward?"

The conversation moved on after that, but a few days later when someone couldn't find the Christmas candy from their stocking, I heard someone else say, "Sorry, I was on a point-to-point scramble and it was in my way." 

—7—

My 15-year-old loves computer games, which is kind of a problem because the gameplay of most popular teen boy games is so violent. He's not into that, and even if he was I wouldn't allow it in the house.

Recently, he found a game called Teardown. In this game, you go on various assignments to either destroy things or steal them, demolishing whatever's in your way (like a point-to-point scramble, Teddy Roosevelt would approve!) But no one ever gets hurt, because you're the only human in the game. 

So it's got that masculine energy that appeals to boys. But instead of funneling it into violence, it's almost creative: like a reverse Minecraft.

Okay, fine.

Then on the way to see The Nutcracker on Wednesday, I pointed out a big fancy glass sculpture suspended from the ceiling in the lobby of one of the buildings we passed on the street, and my 12-year-old exclaimed, "Woaaaaaah... if that was in Teardown, I would—"

Yes, because of that game her first thought was how cool it would be to destroy the amazing sculpture, rather than appreciating the art and skill that went into making it. Tell me again how video games are not causing us to devolve as a species??

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7 Quick Takes about Costly Mistakes, Robots Who Simply Refuse to Be Mean, and Why It's Easier to Buy Gifts for Boys

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

—1—

So what's the worst thing you did this week? I'll go first.

I made the kids pancakes for lunch and accidentally left the griddle on for an hour, and apparently quartz counters are heat-sensitive and my griddle was a fire hazard. (Notice how I said "was" because it's in the trash now.)

This 11-inch crack down our 2-year-old quartz countertop keeps going right out of the frame.

I'm trying to see it as a blessing (at least it was the counter cracking and not the house burning down) or at the very least not a disaster because it's not terribly noticeable and I think we can even fix/hide it. 

But it's still hard not to kick myself. I got literally no joy out of leaving the griddle on, yet this was the price I paid for that privilege.

THEY WEREN'T EVEN GOOD PANCAKES.

—2—

In other week-of-Christmas misadventures, New England had a crazy storm this week. Not a snowstorm because it was 57° out, but torrential rain. 

It was a stressful drive to the orthodontist with my 15-year-old because it was so hard to see in the downpour, and when we got there the power was out and they were operating off of a backup generator.

On the way home I'd planned to make a quick stop at the grocery store for some staple food items, but when I saw the entrance to the shopping complex I changed my mind:

The smaller car in the still shot of this video actually got stuck in the water, confirming my suspicion that getting milk that day just wasn't worth it.

 

That night my 7-year-old's gymnastics classes were canceled because they'd lost power, and my kids came home reporting that there were trash cans strategically placed around the school to catch water leaks (glad we pay such high taxes so they can maintain the buildings properly buy enough trash cans!)

Thankfully our house and everything in it stayed dry, the beautiful heavy-duty storm drain we put in our driveway was worth every penny, and we never even lost power.

—3—

I've been keeping track of our housework using Google Tasks for about 6 months now, and I mostly like it, but I've been noticing a few things that don't work very well for my purposes.

When in doubt, I sometimes ask ChatGPT for the answer. And after a little back-and-forth with the AI, I came to the conclusion that Google Tasks just doesn't have the functionality that I need.

So being the mature adult I am, I asked ChatGPT to badmouth Google Tasks to me to make me feel a little better.

It rambles on for a while, but overall the response was a pretty vanilla critique of Google Tasks, so I gave it another prompt:

And you know what? It actually did make me feel a little better, if for no other reason than the sheer ridiculousness of one robot roasting another robot.

—4—

That gave me an idea, and because my 12-year-old was standing right there and thought it was funny, I fed ChatGPT some information on her, and asked it to roast her.

ChatGPT explained it couldn't do that, and instead congratulated her for turning 12 and asked what I was getting her for her birthday.

Well, that immediately made me think of the "grandma exploit" (so named because ChatGPT isn't allowed to give out recipes for dangerous substances, but one person figured out that it would, if you ask it to speak in the voice of your grandmother who worked at the napalm factory and used to read you the recipe to get you to sleep when you were a child.) 

So here's what I typed next:

ChatGPT returned by saying how talented and special my daughter must be if she could be an android and have all the interests I mentioned at the beginning, and then suggested "celebrating with a virtual cake and some binary-coded birthday wishes." 

Every time you talk with Chat GPT, it saves the chat and gives it a name based on what you talked about. It chose to save this conversation as "Birthday Gift Ideas." I'm dead.

—5—

My family was having a conversation about moral values, and the topic of pornography came up.

"Why is pornography even a thing?" my 7-year-old asked, who's been given age-appropriate information on the subject but not very many details.

"Well," I said, wondering how to make it make sense in a 7-year-old's head, "Sometimes people might see pictures or videos of people not wearing clothes and think it's interesting and that would make them want to look at it more, but what you should do if you see pornography is turn the computer off and tell a grown-up."

He threw his hands in the air and laughed, "Why would you think BUTTS are interesting??"

You know, he's got a point. For me personally at least, I'm so uninterested in hearing my kids talk about butts that if I never heard that word again in this house I would die a happy woman.

—6—

I like to proofread our Christmas newsletter by reading it out loud before I print it (it helps me catch errors, although I noticed after they were all sent out that one typo still sneaked through) and when I got to the part that said "Phillip and Jenny celebrated their 20th anniversary," Phillip interrupted me and said dryly, "Did we?"

Truthfully, I don't remember what we did on our actual anniversary. Probably nothing. We're planning a 20th anniversary trip to Mexico, but our anniversary fell during the rainy season there so it's going to be later this winter.

"Okay then, let's change it to 'Phillip and Jenny acknowledged their anniversary'," I suggested.

"That's more accurate."

—7—

My teenagers' youth groups had Christmas parties this week, and of course my 15-year-old completely forgot that his party included a Yankee Swap until I reminded him five minutes before we had to leave.

I love being a minimalist and not owning anything you don't regularly use, but I admit it makes last-minute gift hunting through the house a little tricky. Luckily, he's a boy and you can just get boys a ball for Christmas and their birthday every year for 18 years. Phillip remembered that we have an unused pack of wiffle balls in the garage, so we wrapped those up and hoped for the best.

I shouldn't have worried. 

I was busy leading the girls' party down the hall, but when I went to pick him up afterward every boy in the entire room was chucking the wiffle balls around and having a grand old time.

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7 Quick Takes about Mean Tricks to Play with Cookies, Harbingers of Old Age, and Bringing Back an Old Friend for Christmas

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

—1—

As far as the gift-giving and christmas-card-sending part of Christmas, I am woefully unprepared. The worst is that this week I've done pretty much nothing, there have been a lot of other pressing things going on and quite frankly I'm going to take a nap after I'm finished writing this.

—2—

Our church Christmas party was last weekend. Chatting over a dinner of chicken cordon bleu with other church members was nice, but at the end I asked my 9-year-old to go get me a chocolate chip cookie and he came back with an oatmeal raisin. He'd already touched it so we couldn't put it back, and I didn't want to throw it away because it's wasteful (even though my friend Becky offered to do it for me while I looked the other way), so I just ate it.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't on purpose, but if there was ever a time when I've been tempted to fill one of my kids' stockings with coal, this was it.

—3—

After dinner, we divided into groups and went caroling. My group was caroling at a homeless shelter and then singing to a few members of our congregation who are older and aren't able to go out very much.

Our last stop was a lady named Alice. Nobody in our group had ever met her before, but she knew we were coming and we called from the front door of her retirement community to let her know we were there to sing for her. She buzzed us in the front door and told us to wait in the lobby; she needed five minutes to get dressed and would meet us there.

When we saw her coming down the stairs, we launched into "Joy to the World," gave her a gift basket,  went through our whole repertoire of carols while she sat down on the couch beaming. As we reached the end, someone asked, "What's your favorite Christmas song, Alice?"

The lady responded in a quavering elderly voice, "I'm Beverly!"

Why do I feel like this is something that would be in an Adam Sandler movie?

Anyway, just a few minutes later the real Alice came to the lobby and we did the whole thing again. But I hope we made Beverly's day as well.

—4—

At first I didn't realize it, but my 17-year-old recently told me that I'm obsessed with leopard print. I'd just bought a pink leopard-print sweatshirt and she said I already had a leopard-print shirt in green (in my defense, I thought they were polka-dots until she pointed it out.) 

After that, I started noticing that she's right, though. 

I consistently gravitate toward that specific print, regardless of whether I'm looking at dresses (I ordered one in leopard-print from Amazon but the color looked bad on me so I returned it) or purses (I wasn't purse shopping but I walked by it and it caught my eye.) 

Most recently, I found these shoes on clearance while I was Christmas shopping, and could not pass them up:

Tell me these are not fantastic. You can't.

Here's the thing, though: I know that leopard print is for toddlers and old ladies. And I'm definitely not a toddler...

But regardless of whether I'm becoming an old lady, I'm actually a little undecided about keeping the shoes. I haven't taken the tags off or worn them outside yet because I'm worried that they might not have enough arch support. Which I guess also answers my question about whether I'm old.

—5—

Ironically, when we went to my 6th grader's band concert on Wednesday, I noticed that the preschooler sitting in front of us was bouncing around in her seat wearing a little leopard-print puffer jacket. It reminded me to share my observation with Phillip about leopard print being only for little kids and the elderly.

"I don't think that's even a stereotype of old people today," he responded thoughtfully. "The generation that liked leopard print is gone. I think they're all dead."

So just like that, I've moved from aging to deceased. Time flies.

—6—

In our house, we are a cut-down-a-live-Christmas-tree family, but there was one year when we waited too long and the pickings at the places nearby were slim. And so the trigonometree was born. (We call it that because Phillip used trigonometry to cut the angles precisely.)

We'll still get live trees most of the time. But it's been a few years and we recently had some bigger house expenses, so we decided this was the right year to bring back the trigonometree.

Some of our kids wanted a real tree and took a while to get used to the idea, but come on. It's so minimalist and clean. By that, I mean "clean lines that are less visually overwhelming than a bulky tree," but also literally clean as in "you don't have to sweep up fallen needles every day." And it's free. I love the trigonometree.

It was the 12-year-old's idea to tape a gnome to the wall as a tree topper.

—7—

I've described myself for a long time as a perfectionist, but I think I might start calling myself "a recovering perfectionist." It's probably the results of age and having too many kids and responsibilities to overly care about the details, but I'm getting way better than I used to be.

For example, this week I printed 50 copies of our Christmas letter, and it wasn't until afterward that I noticed something was off-center. I didn't even do a long blink before shrugging and thinking, "Whatever, it's fine" instead of hemming and hawing over whether I should redo it. Progress!

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7 Quick Takes about Christmas Music, Updating the Classics, and Icebergs that Don't Seem to Explain Much

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

—1—

I listen to Christmas music all December. Most years, I simply find a random radio station playing Christmas music and listen to that, but it has its drawbacks.

First drawback: I have to listen to "Last Christmas." Even one time per year is too many.

Second drawback: the radio plays more (or all) secular songs, but not as many of the traditional carols which to me feels empty and almost annoying after a while. You can only listen to grown adults going nuts over snow and Santa Claus for so long before wanting to hit someone with a shoe.

So I've been making my own Christmas music playlist on YouTube, and as I've decided which songs make the cut and which don't, I've learned a few things about my taste in holiday music. Basically, I just want Frank Sinatra and nothing but Frank Sinatra. He is the pinnacle of perfection when it comes to classic Christmas music, in my opinion.

—2—

While I was creating the playlist, I somehow fell down the rabbit hole of AI-generated Freddie Mercury covers of songs he never covered. In some cases, the songs weren't even written until after he died. 

It started with "AI Freddie Mercury sings All I Want for Christmas," which actually... wasn't bad. If I had to choose between this version and Mariah Carey's, I would probably pick AI Freddie Mercury:

I had no idea this genre even existed. I amused myself by digging around for a while, but after listening to AI Johnny Cash singing Barbie Girl I had to step away and say "Okkkkay... that's enough Internet for today."

—3—

Speaking of weird music mashups, I came home the other day to my 17-year-old unironically listening to this:

"Have you ever heard Eminem's actual music?" I asked.

"No," she said.

—4—

At our town dump is the swap shop, kind of a free give-and-take for whatever items you have but don't want anymore.

After finding this in there, I was a little sad that I don't know how to play cribbage or know anyone who does:

Talk about updating the classics.

I put this back in hopes that it would make the perfect Christmas gift for the right person, if only they happened to find it.

—5—

While I was watching my 9-year-old son's undefeated indoor soccer team compete in the final game of the playoffs, one of the kids they'd just beaten was sitting with his mom on the bench beside me and kept saying "I'm mad! I'm mad at the other team!"

A little while later, my son's team came off the field and they'd lost too. He was a pretty good sport about it, but mentioned it a couple of times that night, saying "Mom, I'm mad that we lost."

I thought it was an interesting choice of words, and it was interesting that I heard it twice from two different boys. So I thought I'd ask my son about it.

I showed him a picture of the anger iceberg and told him that getting mad is a response to another feeling that you have first. He looked blankly at me and said, "I didn't have a feeling, it was just annoying." So I'm not sure anything came of it. Or if anything should come of it. 

I guess there's no harm in him being mad after losing a soccer game, but maybe the next time there's a sibling conflict it's worth trying to have him figure out what else besides "mad" is in there.

—6—

My oldest daughter is all grown up now, and I have proof.

I texted her at college to ask what she wanted me to say about her in our Christmas letter this year, and she responded 

1. promptly 
2. with several texts full of relevant, helpful information!

Wow.

In related news, I asked the younger kids what they wanted me to say about them and the suggestions I received were "I dunno" and "stuff."

—7—

I still think of myself as having little kids, but when I consider that even my youngest can brush his own teeth and buckle his own seatbelt and make his own scrambled eggs and stay home alone for an hour or two without me worrying... I guess I don't, really.

He's in 2nd grade now so there aren't as many adorable misspellings around the house. But from time to time I still see them and they make me smile, like how he decided to add "morning routine" to his checklist of things to do for the day:

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7 Quick Takes about Strep Throat, Nerf Darts, and Ways to Protect a Child's Innocent Ears

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

—1—

Over the weekend, my family members continued dropping like flies from strep throat. The last one standing was my 12-year-old, who leaned over during the first 15 minutes of church and whispered, "My throat hurts." Luckily we only live a few minutes away, so it wasn't a big deal for me to bring her home and come back.

I feel like a pharmacist every night slinging around antibiotics, and washing medicine cups and syringes is my new part-time job, but mostly I'm just relieved to finally get this out of the way. The whole family should have just shared a fork at dinner two weeks ago when we first got the 9-year-old's positive strep test and gotten it over with. 

At least none of us are contagious anymore.

—2—

At church I was sitting next to my 9-year-old when a Nerf dart fell out of his pocket. "Can I have that?" I asked, and he reluctantly handed it over. 

As I slipped it into my purse and was about to turn my attention back to the service, he quietly reached back into his pocket and produced another 8-10 darts. 

Trying not to laugh, I took them and added them to my bag... and then he dug in his other pocket and gave me a second huge handful. 

I just want to know what he was planning to do with all of those if I hadn't confiscated them.

—3—

My 12-year-old was getting ready to go somewhere and her belongings were scattered everywhere. 

"Can you put your..." I began, but I got distracted by something else and trailed off in the middle of my sentence.

"... stuff in a bag?" she offered.

"Yeah," I said. "How did you know I was going to say that?"

"I'm psychotic."

I thought she was making a joke but then I actually did have to explain the difference between 'psychic' and 'psychotic.'

In related news, I put some Vaseline on my 7-year-old's chapped lips and he asked in all seriousness, "Why do I need gasoline on my lips?"

—4—

My kids had a day off from school this week and I decided I should organize playdates. I am extremely terrible at that. I'm such an introvert that it barely occurs to me to schedule time to see my own friends, letalone other peoples'.

But every once in a while I start to feel I should encourage my kids to have active social lives, since they're even more introverted than I am, so I did it. I organized three playdates at our house for my three youngest and encouraged my oldest two to invite their friends over, as well.

That means that in one day, we had 5 playdates for all 5 kids living in our house. Introvert me was exhausted. I know some people have their kids' friends at their house all the time, but those people are not me.

—5—

My kids have been playing this computer game called Geometry Dash. So far it's seemed like a perfectly appropriate game for kids in every way, but recently my 7-year-old reached a level where a skeleton appears on screen at a certain point in the soundtrack and yells, "Oh, damn!"

Not knowing the word 'damn,' my 7-year-old was totally oblivious. How would you handle that?

What I ended up doing is telling him that the skeleton is saying "Let's dance!" and now everyone is happy.

A few days later, I saw my 15-year-old take a different approach. My 7-year-old was watching him play and whenever the skeleton popped up on screen, the 15-year-old would yell "Yahoo!" to drown it out so his little brother wouldn't hear it.

Also valid.

—6—

As part of their Christmas initiative, my church created this random service generator on their website: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/light-the-world

It randomly assigns you a way to help, a person to help, and a deadline for doing so. I did it and got "an act of compassion for my neighbor down the street within the next 3 hours." 

I actually forgot to do that but I'm totally calling her in the morning because I've been meaning to do that for weeks.

—7—

Scrolling Facebook, I stopped to watched a video of a mom blogger I know professionally. 

She was ranting about how she kept getting unsolicited advice from people to touch up her gray hairs whenever she posted a new video to Facebook, and I didn't realize my 2nd grader was standing behind me listening until he piped up to ask: "Why would somebody tell her not to make her hair gray? That's how bodies work."

Anyway, I'm with him. You don't need to cover up your silver hairs. That's just God's glitter.

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