7 Quick Takes about Non-Conforming Eggs, Ferns that Will Absolutely Stress You Out, and Rocking Out to My Educational System

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

—1—

Happy Easter! Years ago we learned about pysanky eggs from Ukraine, and it's become an on-again, off-again Easter tradition for our family even though we have 0% Ukranian heritage.

The traditional method involves drawing geometric patterns with a wax-filled stylus and dipping the egg in successive layers of dye, but those intricate patterns are way harder to do than you might think and exceed the attention span of our kids, so we design them however we want. The result is always creative and fun, even if it's also a cultural abomination that would make a Ukranian babusia weep.

The 14-year-old made an Easter scene with the three crosses on the hill where Jesus and the two theives were crucified:

I love how the background somehow looks like papier-mâché.

The 12-year-old made a starry night sky. Not the painting The Starry Night, just a starry night:

The 9-year-old must have been hungry and decorated his with breakfast food:

Scrambled egg on a hard-boiled egg. Very meta.

And here was my egg. The wax came off in some places so the design disappeared in some areas, but we've been doing this for many years and this was probably my favorite egg I've made so far:

And someone, I'm not sure who, colored this egg like a Minion and glued a scrap of a napkin to its head for hair:

Technically, it did use wax because the drawing was in crayon. But this is pushing the boundaries of what a pysanky egg is for sure. 

—2—

Easter weekend was also general conference (click here if you don't know what that is), and the overarching message I picked up this time was: be like Jesus. Fill your heart with charitable feelings, both toward people you like and people you don't. We need it, and the world needs it.

The general conference talks covered a range of topics and this one by Emily Belle Freeman was probably my favorite:

Runners-up included:

• The story about the dog trying to chase two balls at once and getting so overwhelmed that she just gave up and laid down by Dale G. Renlund (ironically, I missed part of the story because I was in the other room frantically trying to do like three things at the same time)
• Talk by David J. Wunderli about the importance of not letting devotion to Jesus Christ slide off of our list of priorities when life gets hard and/or busy (I also liked this because his joke suggestion to his 6-year-old reminds me of something Phillip would do with our kids)

I plan to re-read and re-listen to these talks many times over the next several months, because they're really important messages for me to absorb. And sometimes, I can be a really slow learner. 

—3—

The 17-year-old was telling us that his girlfriend lost her purse, and his 14-year-old sister exclaimed "Oh, no! What was in it?"

"Everything," he answered. "Her whole inventory."

I had to stifle a laugh, because video-game speak in real life is too funny.

—4—

I saw this online:

Interesting. We all know that being in nature is calming, so this sounds like it could be true. 

But I'd like to submit this contrary evidence, some photos of the fern in our upstairs bathroom which stresses me out every time I see it:

This previously thriving fern has been on death's doorstep ever since I brought it inside for the winter, but it's almost warm enough for me to put it outside again so maybe it will pull through. Cross your fingers.

—5—

The algorithm keeps showing me a parrot named Apollo on social media, probably because it knows we also have a pet bird. 

But unlike our parakeet, who gets lost trying to fly back to her cage for a month after we rearrange the living room, Apollo seems really intelligent. He has a huge vocabulary and his owner teaches him to identify all kinds of objects, what they're made of, and what color they are. 

 

But the other day, I thought about how different kinds of animals have a different number of types of cones (photoreceptors) in their eye to detect color. Humans have three types. How many do parrots have? Can Apollo even see all the colors his owner teaches him?

Well, I looked it up and apparently birds have four cone types, so their color vision is actually better than ours. They can also see UV light. 

So basically, from Apollo's perspective, the guy is showing him stuff that looks different but saying they're the same color, so Apollo just sighs, "Fine, dummy. I'll say whatever color you think it is, I just want a pistachio."

—6—

My 14-year-old daughter made the most obscene cookies at a friend's house. 

Just look at it! It has a normal-sized cookie as a garnish, if that tells you anything.

At 6.3 ounces, it weighs the same as a McDonald's Deluxe Quarter Pounder with all the fixings and is way worse for you, considering it's topped with cream cheese frosting instead of lettuce and tomato.

—7—

I'd been using my 21-year-old's Pimsleur subscription to practice my Spanish, but her gift subscription ran out. Listening to the audio lessons has been really helpful, but Pimsleur is expensive so I don't exactly want to pay for it. So I checked my local library.

The good news is that they have it... but only on a set of CDs. I don't even think we own anything that can play a CD. Luckily, our library also has a "library of things" that includes a CD player, so I also borrowed one of those and now I'm all set. 

I'm thinking of throwing it over my shoulder and walking around town this weekend blasting my Pimsleur, like it's 1983 and I just got a brand new cassette single of "Beat It."

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7 Quick Takes about Ladylike Carrots, Dementia Moments, and What I'm Doing This Weekend

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

—1—

 Look at this carrot crossing its legs that I found in the bag:

Interesting to look at, difficult to peel.

—2—

I overheard my 14-year-old, who was playing a game on the computer, tell her brother, "I was really good at this game back in the day."

"Back in the day"? What day? Yesterday? 

I guess due to our respective ages, our idea of what "back in the day" means is pretty different. There are bras in my dresser that I've owned for longer than she's been alive. 

—3—

My best friend from college and I don't talk nearly enough, besides emailing a few times a year and sending Christmas cards, so we decided to call each other and catch up. It's like we hadn't spent any time apart, like always, which is how you know she's such a good friend.

At one point in the conversation, Kim asked me "So what are all your people up to?" 

I looked out the window, where my 12-year-old was sitting on the deck in a camping chair, wearing shorts and a winter coat, eating ice cream straight out of the carton.

Normal. We are all doing completely normal things in a normal way, thanks.

Just kidding. Kim's been my friend for a long time. She would never believe that.

—4—

Big news. The behemoth refrigerator in our garage is gone! By way of short backstory: once upon a time, our nice fridge stopped working so we got an ugly secondhand one as a placeholder until Phillip could fix it. Fast forward five years later, and we were still using the placeholder in the kitchen while the other fridge took up space in the garage.

It was time to get rid of the one in the garage, and we did, after a very tense conversation that neither one of us enjoyed having. 

Phillip had never stopped intending to get that nice-looking fridge back in the kitchen, so I felt really sad as I watched him help someone else load it into the back of their pickup truck and drive away with it.

When he came back in the house, I gave him a hug and said, "Sorry your dream didn't work out."

"Which one?" he joked wryly.

—5—

The other day I was in line at Home Goods with my 9-year-old and saw this bag hanging near the register.

Pointing to it, I asked my 9-year-old "Isn't that a funny bag?"

"You said that before another time that we came here."

"I did?" I said, as I took a picture of it.

"Yes. And you took a picture of it before, too."

—6—

When we traveled home in February for my dad's funeral, I took the kids to a museum with an exhibit on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Apparently the guy who invented the pacemaker had been partially inspired by the story's idea of using electricity to re-animate people:

Anyway, the exhibit at the museum inspired me to read the book, so I checked it out from the library and have been chipping away at it ever since. I finally finished, went to go put my review on Goodreads, and discovered that I'd already read it in 2016. 

I'd even written a review.

This was way worse than the dementia moment I apparently had in Home Goods (Take #5.) I've had the experience of getting a few pages into a book and realizing I'd already read it, but this was something else. This was a full cover-to-cover reading where I didn't recognize a single word. From beginning to end, I was totally convinced I'd never read it before. 

Anyway, the book was okay, but this review was pretty accurate and made me laugh:

Not my review, but it could have been.

—7—

In preparation for Easter, our family has been reading an Old Testament prophecy about Jesus in the morning and a New Testament verse that shows its fulfillment every day, and then we've been doing one layer of a pysanky egg (we've done these before and it's really time-consuming, so I'm loving doing these a little bit at a time instead.)

Also this weekend, it's general conference! Twice a year, world leaders from my church give what are essentially spiritual TED talks, which are then broadcast all around the globe on Saturday and Sunday. It sounds boring but it's weirdly not.

My kids also look forward to our general conference snacks tradition, which probably helps a little.

But I also think it's because these people devote themselves entirely to encouraging the whole world to walk with the Savior, which means their words are prayerfully chosen to help us with exactly what's happening in our lives right now. 

Anyone who is interested can watch with me on the church's website or YouTube channel (bring your own snacks.)

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