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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