7 Quick Takes about Jalepeño Jelly, Getting My Self-Improvement Straight from the Dump, and Disappearing Dish Drying Racks

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

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—1—

For a themed luncheon at church, everyone was supposed to bring a dish starting with their first initial. I started thinking the night before about what to bring (something complicated like jambalaya = no) and realized that jello would be, like, the easiest thing ever. But it needs to set overnight, and I didn't have any in the house.

Do you hear what I'm saying? I'm telling you that I can't even get it together enough to bring  jello to a social function.

So I did the next easiest thing I could come up with, which was jalapeño jelly to put on crackers with cream cheese.

Realized later that juice would have been even easier, but you live and learn I guess.

I felt better when the other "J" at the lunch (my friend Jeanne) brought a salad and billed it as "Jeanne's chicken salad."

—2—

Phillip and I have been talking about our budget, and since we had so many expenditures over the summer, we decided to do a no-spend September (and October, since September is halfway over).

We'll buy essentials only, and explained to the kids that we won't be taking them out for ice cream, renting movies, or buying them stuff they don't strictly need. We don't do a lot of that anyway so the news was mostly met with a shrug, but the 10-year-old exclaimed, "Does that mean I can't play indoor soccer this winter??"

I had to laugh because that kid has sports in his DNA. Recently, he told me completely out of the blue, "I love sports. I couldn't imagine my life without them."

"What sports?"

"Any sports."

"Watching or playing them?"

"Both."

"What do you like about sports?" This was a genuine question, because I hate sports and can't think of anything more boring to watch or less fun to do.

"I like running around with my friends and chucking a ball."

"Why?"

"I don't know... sometimes I have too much energy in my arms and legs and it feels good to get it out."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best explanation of a boy that I've ever heard.

Sadly, we will not be streaming any sports channels for him during No-Spend September/October, but luckily we can watch Thursday night football on Amazon Prime which we already paid for earlier this year, so he should be able to soldier through the next 6 weeks.

—3—

Our local dump has an area called the swap shop, where you can take or leave almost anything. I saw this self-improvement workbook there and brought it home, which is totally fine because it cost $0. 

Has one note written inside it, that's it. Apparently the person who previously owned it didn't need much self-improvement.

The book has different sections for home, health, budget, personal development, relationship, and self-care. I haven't looked at all of it yet, but I started with the budget section (hence the no-spend experiment) and it seems like a pretty good tool so far. And it's not too... self-helpy, if you know what I mean. It just has a lot of good prompts to get you thinking about a topic and making a plan for action.

The only thing I don't understand is why it says STICKER JOURNAL in all caps on the cover like I'm 8 years old and that would be a major draw for me. The stickers aren't even relevant to the book.

(Remember the luncheon earlier this week? There, I saw a sticker on Jeanne's water bottle with flames that say "I was told there would be a handbasket." I would totally use that one if it was in the book, but unfortunately I didn't see it.)

—4—

On their way back to college, my 18- and 20-year-olds were laughing all the way through the airport because every ad we passed had to name-drop A.I. in one way or another.

Elevate your game with AI. 

With AI-driven solutions to fit your needs. 

Harnessing the power of AI to completely AI your AI.

Okay, the last one was not real but it felt like it. Then I was picking up a prescription at CVS today and saw this board game: 

Pictionary vs. AI. Of course.

I have no idea if it's any good. In fact, I read the reviews and it sounds like the A.I. is terrible which probably adds to the playability of this game. But seriously, is there any product that can not have an A.I. tie-in?

—5—

Since returning from bringing my girls to college on September 1st, there's been at least one kid home sick from school every single day for two weeks (COVID was cycling through the family.) 

We finally got better and everyone went back to school on Monday... for two days. On Wednesday morning my son called me from the nurse's office, then came home and threw up all day. 

Time for Round 2. I just got my flu shot and went off my immunosuppresants, so bring it on.

—6—

This week my friend has been out of town and I've been going over to feed her cat, and also doing a little bit of cleaning each time to surprise her when she gets home. She recently lost her mom (and is actually out of town for the funeral) and that's when chores like cleaning go straight to the bottom of the "What does it even matter?" pile. So this is something I can do so she has one less monkey on her back.

I think we should all clean each other's houses instead of our own because it's WAY more satisfying, probably because you don't have to watch your kids immediately trash it and undo all your hard work to your face. When you clean someone else's home, in your mind their place just stays nice forever. 

—7—

On the advice of The Minimal Mom, I got rid of our eyesore dish drying rack on the kitchen counter. I've ignored her suggestions for a long time because I thought I'd totally hate drying each dish by hand and putting it away as they get washed, but so far I don't. 

In fact, I'm actually loving not waking up every morning to an overflowing mountain of clean dishes that all the kids are "too busy" to help put away as they're rushing around getting ready for school.

I suppose I have to put the dishes away either way, but without the drying rack the counter inbetween looks like this:

Instead of like this:

Imagine that this is an overwhelming mountain of clean dishes.

I'm going to give it a week or two before making a final decision, but so far I really like it. Even the kids say it's not bad, which is not at all what I expected them to say. I just need to figure out certain things that we store with the lids on, so they really need to be super-dry and I'm not sure the towel is doing as thorough as drip drying.

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