7 Quick Takes about Stealing Pants in Reverse, Becoming an Award-Winning Chili Chef, and Getting Suspicious Looks from Birds

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

—1—

My college daughter mentioned that she was being woken up by the light through her window, so I thought it would be nice to order her a sleep mask and see if that helped.

I did get her one, but not this specific one because the product image for it looked like the entire family was wearing bras on their faces:

—2—

Last month I took my 16-year-old son fall clothes shopping, and they forgot to remove the ink tag from one of the pairs of pants he bought. The store wasn't conveniently located to me, so it took several weeks to go back and have them take it off.

While I was at the customer service desk having the tag removed, my 13-year-old looked around and bought some clothing for herself, including a pair of pants that we got home and realized STILL HAD THE INK TAG ATTACHED.

I do not have time for these shenanigans.

This time, I stopped by a different location of that store to remove the tag while I was driving home from my 8-year-old's gym, and the second I walked in the door the theft alarms on either side started going off because of the ink tag. 

—3—

A few months ago I picked up a self-improvement journal at the dump (long story) and have actually been getting a lot out of it.

First of all, I tracked my water intake for a month and realized I was dehydrated. The goal was 8 glasses per day, and at first I could barely choke down 4 but it got easier with time. By the end of the month, I was regularly finishing my fourth glass by 10:30AM.

(Full disclosure, once the month ended and I stopped recording how many glasses I had, I stopped drinking as much.)

Second, I made a daily exercise plan and have been sticking to it. I run a mile a day and take the same route every time, but today I ran farther than usual and looked it up on a pedometer map when I got home. And do you know what I realized? This whole time, I've actually been running two miles instead of one. Today, I ran for two and a half miles. 

Before, I'd just assumed my "mile" jogs took so long because I was the slowest runner in the world. This actually makes a lot more sense.

—4—

We went to our church's annual chili cook-off competition, and Phillip decided to enter this year. He's never cooked chili before, but if you know Phillip you know that something like that wouldn't stop him.

First he looked up a recipe that seemed promising, and then he asked AI for tips on cooking the best chili. And do you know what? He won.

If you want to know, AI suggested not cooking the meat before adding it to the chili. You just put it in raw and simmer it for a long, long time until the meat is cooked through. And according to the chili competition judges, it worked.

—5—

For Halloween, we used to have a big noisy gaggle of kids to take trick-or-treating, but this year it was just the 8- and 10-year-old. The oldest two are in college, the 16-year-old was working, and the 13-year-old went out with her friends. Frankly, it was a little boring. I think next year, we need to go trick-or-treating with friends because it was just too quiet.

The 10-year-old was a bank robber and the 8-year-old was an ear of corn. I was the proudest of the corn costume, a little because it made several people laugh and ask "Are you... corn?" and mostly because of this awesome hat I made:

Made out of scrapbook paper following a YouTube tutorial.

Do you know how long it takes to follow an 11-minute video on how to make this thing? Two hours. Remind me to take it with a grain of salt run away screaming the next time I see a DIY tutorial with the phrase "super easy" in the title. 

—6—

My progress learning Spanish is so imperceptibly slow that most of the time, I honestly don't think I'm making any. But every now and then, something happens to show me that I've improved and I'm genuinely shocked.

This week at the grocery store, I overheard an English-speaking couple asking a Spanish-speaking employee where the garlic is, but they couldn't understand each other, so I asked the employee for them without having to stop and think first about how to say it. 

—7—

Birds are funny animals because their eyes are on the sides of their heads, so literally every time they look at you they have to cock their head and give you the side-eye.

My 16-year-old showed me a side-by-side comparison of our bird Pringles and Duane "The Rock" Johnson, and asked if I saw any similarities between the two:

What do you think?

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