7 Quick Takes about Saying Goodbye, Spaceships Bigger Than My House, and Flattery Getting You Everywhere In This House

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

—1—

I've known for a few months that it was going to happen, but on Sunday I was officially released from my calling as Young Women's president. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, basically everything is done by volunteers, and for the last 3 years my volunteer job at church was leading the teenage girls' youth organization. It was a labor-intensive calling, for sure.

People think the most energy-consuming part is planning a constant cycle of youth lessons and activities — which does take a good chunk of time, but the real work of the calling is invisible. It's praying for and thinking of ways to help the kids who are having a hard time. It's fielding phone calls from worried parents or dropping everything to go visit one of the girls in the hospital. It's helping them write college essays, going to support them in their school plays or concerts, or reading their favorite YA book so I had something to talk to them about. I won't miss some of the busywork and the meetings, but I will definitely miss being part of these girls' lives.

When I told my daughter I was going to be released as Young Women's president, her response wasn't what I expected. I thought she might demand immediately to know who the next president would be, or maybe that she would be sad (or happy?) that I wasn't going to be the president anymore. But instead, she said, "You mean you're unemployed?" Then, realizing that she had a calling at church in her class presidency, she giggled, "I have a job and you don't!"

—2—

The 14-year-old has been relying on her brother to pick her up from cross-country practice, but recently he's either been late or forgotten.

One morning I noticed that she'd left this note on the fridge, hoping that someone (anyone!) would come get her on time that day. Kind of the equivalent of sending out a "help me" message in a bottle.

You can feel the desperation in the handwriting.

After the last time he forgot, I went to go pick up the 14-year-old  myself and she was venting to me in the car. Trying to empathize (and also diffuse the situation with humor), I told her, "You have my permission to hit him in the head with a frying pan."

"How would that solve my problem??" she cried. "I don't want to hit him with a frying pan, I just want him to pick me up!"

Well then, I guess someone in this car is more mature than me.

—3—

The 14-year-old recently read The Martian and was dying to watch the movie. So one night we put the younger kids to bed, got some of her Halloween candy, and watched it together on Netflix. 

I enjoyed the movie, and luckily my daughter knows me well enough to tell me at every suspenseful scene what the outcome is going to be so I don't have heart palpitations.

There's one intense scene where Matt Damon is stuck on Mars rationing his food and the NASA crew on earth is desperately calculating whether they can get more supplies to him before he starves to death, and it was at that moment that my daughter chose to wail "Oh no, I only have two Nerds gummies left!"

And that's all you need to know about kids and how they work.

—4—

The only thing I didn't like about The Martian  was the ridiculously huge, sleek interior of the spacecraft. It looked like a cruise ship instead of a spaceship, with an onboard gym the size of a Planet Fitness.

Seriously, I laughed out loud when I saw their ship's exercise area. There were two rowing machines. Two. The ship was designed for 6 astronauts, surely they could have worked out some kind of turn-taking system instead of SENDING A SECOND MACHINE TO SPACE WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS.

But if you can suspend disbelief and just make believe that's what real spacecrafts are like, the movie was great. It was just like watching Friends and pretending their place is an actual New York City apartment.

If you're interested, though, here's a video tour of the real International Space Station:

—5—

Phillip is back from a work trip he just took to India. He was jetlagged and didn't really enjoy the trip, and is glad to be home.

Here was the view from his hotel:

It's hard to see with the clouds, but that's the ocean beyond the buildings.

Did you know that India spans two time zones, but in order to put the whole country on the same time they compromised and are on the half hour between the two? 

Phillip would often call us at 4 AM when he couldn't sleep, which for us was the evening of the day before, so the kids were like "Dad, are you calling from the future? Tell us what's going to happen tomorrow."

Layover in the Doha, Qatar; looks like we should just go on vacation to the Doha airport sometime.

—6—

Tonight, my boys are going trick or treating with friends for the first time ever. In the past, we've always gone out as a family and it was a total party. We have 6 kids so we never needed to go with a group: we had three families' worth of kids!

But now that the oldest two have moved out and the teenagers have their own plans, it's only the two youngest boys who want to go trick-or-treating so we had to find other families to go with. Because going out with just the four of us last year was BORING. I'm sure they'll have a way better time this year with their friends.

—7—

The kids already have bags of candy from a church trunk-or-treat event last weekend, so I asked my 9-year-old, "Do you have a piece of candy you'd like to give me?"

He offered me a pack of gummies. Meh.

"Do you have any chocolate?" I asked.

He said he didn't have much chocolate left, but he rummaged around in his bag and found a Crunch bar. "You can have this," he said, offering it to me.

"Oh, that's okay," I said, waving it away. "Crunch bars are your favorite."

"You're my favorite," he answered.

When an audible awww escaped my lips, he grinned and said, "Yeah, that was a pretty good one."

I'm in trouble.

Click to Share: