7 Quick Takes about Creative Budgeting, Dress Drama, and Hanging Up My Pancake Whisk for Good

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

—1—

Okay, I'm tired of winter now. A hundred years is enough, I'm ready for spring. Here is a shot of the 10-year-old going outside to play basketball in the driveway:

Not the correct way to play broomball.

And no, this isn't an action shot snapped at the precise moment the ball was going through the net. The ball was stuck in the frozen hoop until Phillip came over and knocked it out with a broom.

—2—

Since October, we've been tracking our money in a more detailed budget to be more on top of our finances. We record all our expenses in a spreadsheet, writing down the category of each purchase. 

Sometimes we aren't quite sure how to categorize them.

Recently, we bought a replacement stylus for a tablet that one of the kids had lost, and Phillip put it in the category for music and sports registrations called "Kids' Activities." BECAUSE OUR KIDS' FAVORITE ACTIVITY IS LOSING STUFF.

—3—

The 16-year-old got his driver's license! I'm so excited. He can get himself to and from school and work now, which is huge. I'm already breathing easier not having to plan around his work schedule, and sometimes he can even help chauffer around his siblings when I have conflicts.

It snowed the night before his test, but the instructor complimented him on how he handled the vehicle on the slick roads. (I like to think it's because of the valuable lessons he learned by sliding off the road with me a few weeks ago.)

—4—

Tonight there's a dance at the middle school that the 7th grader is really excited about. Two months in advance, she ordered a dress specifically for it and she's been saving it, not even wanting to wear it to church until after the dance.

Last week, she went to iron the dress, set the heat too high, and accidentally melted it. When we couldn't salvage it, she was disappointed. but undaunted, she ordered a second dress. 

When it arrived four days before the dance, it turned out to be way  shorter than we thought it was going to be. So with only a few days until the dance, we ordered a third dress that would get here the day before and crossed our fingers... SUCCESS!

But seriously, I never want to do that again. We cut it close and that was really stressful.

—5—

My 3rd grader's class has a "share day" once a week. If it's a physical object they can bring it in, but if it's a talent they can send a video of it to the teacher and she'll play it on the smartboard in the classroom.

We took a video of him doing a handstand for share day, but then when I listened to it I noticed something: you can clearly hear some unflattering background audio of someone using the restroom. So what to do? We muted it and put it to a soundtrack, and now it sounds like a hype video on TikTok.

—6—

I helped a friend who's in charge of a project at a local refugee family shelter. They're organizing a free clothing closet for the residents, and right now all of their inventory is thrown in huge storage bins with all the sizes and genders mixed up. The task is to sort the clothes and then figure out appropriate ways to hang or shelve it all.

As someone who used to basically do this in her attic when she was saving and handing down clothes for 6 children, you'd think I would be good at this.

But I'm not. In fact, I was having flashbacks to the sheer overwhelm I'd feel at the end of every season, trying to organize and sort my kids' outgrown clothes to store in the attic. So I can't say I swooped in and saved the day with my superior organization skills, but I tried to help as much as I could.

—7—

My kids had a snow day from school so I decided to be a super-fun mom and make them pancakes. What a mistake. You guys, I hate pancakes. Everyone says "just make pancakes!" like it's the world's easiest food to throw on the table but those people must be either (1) from another planet or (2) popping frozen pancakes in the toaster and just pretending.

Making pancakes is SO messy and time-consuming. It dirties multiple bowls, spatulas, and measuring cups (we don't use a boxed mix so that's part of the problem.) The batter gets burned onto the edges of the griddle and drips onto the counter where it hardens into cement and guess how many people want to help clean up. Then someone (me) needs to stand at the griddle for 10 years cooking enough pancakes to feed four kids. And to top it all off, the recipe we pulled from the Internet had too much applesauce to fully cook through and we ended up throwing 75% of them in the trash.

After ranting in frustration to no one in particular, I googled something like "I hate pancakes" and found this cathartic post on Reddit:

I, too, do not like the person I become when making pancakes.

The best part of the post, though, was when I scrolled down to read the comments and this was the first one:

That certainly made me laugh and feel a little better. Then I told the kids that I'm officially retiring from making pancakes, and that made me feel a lot better. 

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