7 Quick Takes about New Uses for Traffic Cones, Packing Peanuts as a Sculpting Medium, and Who Not To Take Into an Antique Store

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

—1—

The battle of me versus the other seven members of the household who like to set their dirty dishes on the counter instead of in the dishwasher continues. (It may not be all seven of them, but let's go with that to preserve anonymity.) 

In the past, leaving a written reminder on the counter has been helpful, so I scribbled "NO DISHES HERE" on a piece of scratch paper and left it there. Later I found that my 11-year-old had added a helpful illustration:

My 11-year-old saying the quiet part out loud.

—2—

Unfortunately, the written reminder didn't work. I woke up the next morning to see the sign surrounded by a rainbow of dirty dishes. It almost looked intentional, like they were trying to frame my message with their filth.

So I knew that drastic measures were needed. I cleared the dishes, added two full-size construction cones from the garage to either side of the sign (with a towel underneath them), and then I left for the day to work an 8-hour volunteer shift at the temple.

The cones apparently worked, because I came home and EVERYTHING WAS IN THE DISHWASHER! Of course, I had to look at two neon orange construction cones in the kitchen instead, but I guess you can't have everything.

—3—

Our parakeet Pringles really likes us now. When we let her out of her cage, she always wants to be on our shoulders, warbling to us. But unfortunately, she has a deep-seated fear of human hands no matter whose they are, so if you reach over to adjust her if she's squawking too loud in your ear or accidentally scratching you with her toenails, she bites you. And it's not a warning bite or a playful bite. She's trying to kill you.

So I'm a little exasperated with Pringles. Then Facebook, which spies on me and probably knew this, showed me this reel. There was a touching guitar melody over a video of a cute yellow cockatiel and text saying, "If you ever find yourself getting frustrated with your bird, remember..."

The next text read "...they're just tiny little souls as quirky, curious, and imperfect as we are." Watching over my shoulder, the 14-year-old  said, "Oh. I thought it was going to say '...they have little brains and they're pretty stupid.'"

Also true.

—4—

My youngest two kids have spent their mornings at church camp this week. It's similar to Vacation Bible School, but they call it Hero Camp: the idea is learning about the scriptures through a different "scripture hero" every day. Someone dressed up as a scriptural figure visits the kids, teaches them about their story, and then the kids sing songs and do different activities based on what they're learning. 

They brought home several cool things they made and did, but my favorite were the packing peanut temples they made. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, most of our temples have a gold statue of an angel blowing a trumpet to announce the second coming of Jesus Christ, so my 9-year-old included that on top of his temple.

A perfect likeness!

—5—

We've been trying to find fun things to do in the vicinity of my son's gym during practice, and found a nearby disc golf course. Four of us checked out a disc golf set from the library and headed there for a few hours. 

It was our second time ever playing frisbee golf. The last time was probably 7 or 8 years ago, and that time I only made it to the third hole before leaving to go wait out a massive toddler temper tantrum in the car while everyone else finished playing. So needless to say we were really, really good.

We had NO idea what we were doing. A few guys passed us and we tried to copy what we'd seen them doing, but it didn't work out very well. It was fun though, and we had a good time even if we were objectively awful at it.

—6—

Another day, the 11-year-old and I went to the rail trail and rode our bikes. It was technically a "spur," which means it was a shorter branch off the main trail. I wish it had been longer to get some proper exercise, but it was very pretty and we stopped at the lake next to the trail to skip rocks.

Nearby, there was an antique store and I convinced my 11-year-old to look in there with me. He'll never make that mistake again. The place was huge, and by the time we were halfway through I think his soul had left his body. I've never seen him so bored.

"This is me," he said at one point, pointing to a pair of these grumpy-looking pig earrings he saw hanging on the wall.

I think I'll go back sometime. But I'll go by myself, when I can browse around at my leisure without a companion following me around moaning and fainting like a Victorian lady.

—7—

One night at dinner, the table was fully occupied by a half-finished puzzle on one side and a large painting project on the other, so we decided to eat downstairs while watching a movie. 

The younger kids haven't seen most of the classic Disney movies from the 1950's, 60s, and 70s, because the older kids have all seen them so we never made a point of watching them again. So I read off a list of titles and the younger kids chose Peter Pan.  

After watching Robin Hood last week and now this, I've decided that there used to be a marvelous silliness in kids' animation that was lost in the shift to a more realistic computer generated style. We're going to have to watch more of these.

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