7 Quick Takes about Unintentionally Jumping on the Bandwagon, Mistaken Ideas about Batteries, and Paying Taxes

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

—1—

Apparently, it's become trendy to do strength training as you age to prevent bone loss. Which is fine. Yay for not getting osteoparosis! I'm just a little irritated because now it looks like my obsession with my Kaleigh Cohen dumbbell workouts is just me hopping on a trend.

I keep seeing things about strength training and longevity, and recently read this article, which links to a bunch of other health-related quizzes and calculators.

I don't like push-ups because they mess with one of my wrists, but out of curiosity I did this push-ups test to see where I fall. I did 12 of them with decent form and thought, "Hey, that's pretty good!" But when I put it into the calculator, it told me I was below the average of 16 for a woman my age. I puzzled over that for a minute, knowing that I'm 43 years old and in pretty good shape and that's total baloney. Then I noticed that the instructions said for women to do the push-ups on their knees, which I could do 100 of, so mystery solved.  

—2—

In addition to lifting weights I've added a quest for mobility as well. I'm extremely inflexible, and traditional stretching felt like banging my head against a brick wall. No matter what I did, it felt like my hips were made of concrete and that maybe even average flexibility was beyond what I was anatomically capable of.

I finally figured out I needed to look up "mobility" instead of "stretching." Phillip and I have been following this video every night this week (the kids think we're such cute/weird old people doing our stretches together), and while I still hate it, I definitely think it's making a difference:

 

When we do the nerve gliding at 2:40, I sing "Aaaaall the single ladies, aaaaall the single ladies!" I can't help it, it looks just like in the music video.

"You're going to be a single lady if you don’t knock it off," Phillip says.

After one week of doing this, though, I can already see a big difference. When I started, the tips of my fingers could barely touch my toes. And here's what I can do now:

If you feel biologically incapable of touching your toes, I highly recommend watching the video above. I didn't know it until now, but there's all kinds of stuff with your nerves and your hips that you need to work on in addition to just sitting there trying to reach for your toes every day.

—3—

When the kids were little, I was always in their bathroom supervising bath time, helping them brush teeth, or begging them to use the potty instead of the living room carpet. However, they're older now and the only time I even go in their bathroom is to water a plant I keep in there once a week.

Theoretically they all have cleaning chores in the bathroom, but judging by the gobs of toothpaste in the sink, the hair in the drain, and the underwear on the floor, they've been busy. I decided to just clean it myself while they were at school, since the room could use an adult-level deep cleaning every once in a while anyway.

As I replaced the dirty hand towel and cleaned dried bloody nose spatters off the floor near the overflowing trash can, I kept thinking that this bathroom is like the island of unsupervised bad kids in Pinocchio. 

And I made a mental note to come up here and check things out a little more often, if for no other reason than to make sure the kids aren't turning into donkeys.

—4—

Two months ago I reorganized the kitchen, and I'm really happy with how everything turned out except our system for organizing Tupperware. How do you do it?

I've Googled DIY systems, I've asked AI for ideas, I've looked a million different organization options in the store. I just don't see anything I like. Other than paring down our Tupperware, I can't figure out how to make a space-efficient system that's easy to put everything away, easy to find what you need, and not terribly ugly.

—5—

In a conversation with Phillip, the 17-year-old was insisting that batteries came with a "DO NOT EAT" warning on them to avoid lawsuits. He went to go check and there wasn't, prompting him to ask AI about whether they are nutritious. 

As always, AI was thorough, both in the length of its answer and its inability to detect when someone is just messing with it instead of asking a genuine question.

I love how it phrased the part circled in yellow as if it was dispelling a common misconception. No human being has ever thought, "Hmm, there's energy in batteries so I'm going to replace my morning coffee with a couple of 9-volts."

—6—

My 14-year-old has been working an after-school job for about four months now. She loves having spending money, but she doesn't love the taxes that get taken out of her paycheck automatically. 

When she complains about having to pay taxes, I do what any good parent would do: I empathize. I usually say something like, "I know! Having ROADS to drive on is the worst! And all the free books at the public library? That's just gross. The worst thing is that if the house catches on fire, a bunch of guys will come put it out, and they'll even pull me out of the rubble and rush me to the hospital afterward. Like, leave me alone already! Why are you so obsessed with me??"

It goes over really well. Follow me for more parenting tips.

—7—

Because I've been into physical mobility content lately, my social media feeds are full of people doing squats, stretches, and the like. And because I'm also a ridiculous person, it sometimes shows me "mobility" videos like this:

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