7 Quick Takes about One Last Hike, Ordering a Giant Pizza, and Sounds to Wake Up To

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

—1—

After a week of online training at home, our 19-year-old daughter left for the Missionary Training Center. I'm really missing the sweet spirit she brought to the whole house, especially after she really put her life on hold to make Jesus her full-time focus. On her breaks between Zoom classes, she'd tell me about what she was learning or the things she'd been thinking during her morning scripture study, and it was really neat for me to be a part of that.

As great as it was, though, Zoom is still Zoom, and she's really enjoying being at the MTC campus where she can see her teachers and fellow missionaries in person instead of a bunch of digital squares with floating heads.

—2—

I've never cried at a college drop off; I think it's a little dramatic when I'll literally see them again in a few months. But sending one off on a mission feels more final: she's not going to be back for a year and a half! 

The life of a missionary is really busy and focused, but she does have one day a week to do her personal stuff like calling home. And guess what? I missed her call this week. I wasn't even doing anything fun, I was organizing junk in the attic and left my phone downstairs.

It was irritating, but we did just drop her off at the airport on Tuesday so it's not like it's the end of the world. I guess we'll have to establish a time frame so I don't continue to flake out for the next 18 months. Because that would be just like me.

—3—

On her last week here, our daughter wanted to do "last" things with the family before leaving. We played some family board games, went to one of the kids' soccer games, and went on a family hike/walk in the woods. 

Phillip in particular was happy she wanted to go to the woods. We've been making the kids go on family nature hikes since we were carrying them around the trail in backpacks. Half the time they complain about it bitterly, but in the end they always seem to remember it fondly and appreciate it just as they're about to leave home.

"I did that," Phillip pointed out to me as we were walking behind these three clearly enjoying being in nature. He sure did, because I wasn't a hiker before I met him and he was the driving force in fostering this.

Granted, the 19-year-old is going to Nevada on her mission where I assume she won't being seeing forest like this for a while so she probably wanted to soak it up while she still could.

—4—

I've been working on the wall behind the couch. Our old wall clock somehow felt too small and too big at the same time (too small for the wall, but with a chunky and overbearing frame.) So I found one on Amazon that was bigger in inches and lighter in looks:

It was delivered in this box and I know you don't tip Amazon drivers, but I kind of felt like I should when he handed me what looked like a 30" pizza. 

—5—

Next step, I'm going to attempt to add a little color and life to the walls by hanging plants in these wall planters on either side of the clock. 

I found some nice-looking pothos plants on Facebook Marketplace, but after I brought them home I realized I'm likely going to kill them while trying to transplant them into the wall planters and I will have wasted $20.

I've gotten lucky at not killing plants lately and it's gone to my head, but I really don't have a green thumb at all and this was probably beyond my skill set.

—6—

A few years ago, I started listening to sleep meditations on YouTube at night when I need help winding down (or sometimes in the middle of the night when I wake up and can't get back to sleep.)

I like Jason Stephenson, but then I started feeling the need for more variety and occasionally started listening to Down to Sleep and the Spanish-language channels Zentopía and Easy Zen.

Most recently, I found an Irish guy named Stephen Dalton. It seems like he gets an idea for a new story series and writes a bunch of them. Right now I'm working my way through his "most boring" series. They're so boring I don't really remember what they're about, though. 

I've actually tried out other channels that I liked at first, but after getting scared awake at 2AM with a Pampers ad at full blast I changed my mind.

—7—

Recently, the Facebook algorithm randomly showed me this:

I may have recorded this one and set it as my morning alarm, and also set the same artist's good night song as a nighttime alarm to remind me to go to bed.

When Phillip heard my bedtime alarm going off he asked, "Did you write that with AI?" I don't know. Did the guy use AI to write it? Now that I think about it, it sounds he could have. Maybe the whole video is AI and there is no guy. Maybe nothing is real and we're all living in a simulation. Who knows? But I like the song so we're just going to leave it at that.

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