—1—
I finished my self-defense class!
The last day was fun, we suited up and role played three different scenarios where the two big guys approached us in different ways.
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| We were a small but mighty group. |
I went last, after having watched the other ladies get attacked. They all stayed on their feet, but during the last scenario the instructor grabbed me from behind and took me down to the floor which I wasn't expecting. After a bit of struggle, I managed to roll over and elbow him in the face just like they taught us, and run away.
When we went to evaluate the videos of our mock attacks, the instructor told me they only do floor defense when a participant seems "like they can handle it," so I think I learned what I needed to learn.
—2—
Phillip was making dinner on the night of my birthday when the 14-year-old went to go investigate.
"Eww, cabbage?" she squealed. "You're making cabbage??"
"Yes," Phillip answered her.
"That's what Mom wanted for her birthday dinner?"
"...Sure."
Truth is, he'd completely forgotten that letting the birthday boy/girl choose the menu on their special day was a thing we did. But the other truth is, I'm completely happy to eat any meal that someone else planned, shopped for, and prepared. When you hate cooking as much as I do, the best meal in the world is the one served to you by someone else who made it happen.
I also should add here not only was the cabbage pretty good and even the kids ate it, he also made me a strawberry ice cream cake with layers of chocolate cake and vanilla pudding with crumbled Oreo. I didn't even take a picture before devouring it, it was so amazing.
—3—
I promised an update picture of our new fireplace with the painted bricks, now that we've got the pellet stove moved back in.
Here's a before picture from a few Christmases ago:
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| Yes to the holiday joy, no to the 1980s red brick. |
And here's an after photo:
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| So much better! |
While I was painting the fireplace, I put a sample of each color on the back of a Ritz cracker box to help us choose a complementary color for the living room walls (it's time to repaint, anyway.) When Phillip took me out to dinner for my birthday, we went to the hardware store across the street afterward to look at paint swatches.
"We look really classy walking in with a cracker box," Phillip said.
"Of course we do!" I told him. "This is a brand name Ritz cracker box, it's not even the store brand!"
—4—
Phillip and I have a weekly "executive meeting" where we look at the calendar and hash out who is giving rides to which kids, what nights he's working late, or if the kids have concerts/events/other stuff going on.
It works really well for staying on track day-to-day, but I realized that it means we handle each day as it comes and don't often get around to the bigger picture things like planning vacations or home projects. So I was thinking about that and happened to find this post, which turned out to be exactly what we needed.
We usually tried to talk about this stuff before during executive meetings, but without a template it sometimes just fell off our radar. Now theoretically we could have our ducks more in a row. We'll see.
—5—
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| She's told me before that people give her a hard time about forgetting to send out her holiday cards, asking her "Don't you like us anymore?" so I think this is how she deals with it. |
I doubt she designed and printed this just for me, so what I like to imagine is that she has a stack of these right next to her envelopes and stamps, and habitually slips one in every letter she writes just to let the recipient know: it's not you, it's me.
—6—
The track team often has a carbo-load meal the night before meets, taking turns at different team member's houses who volunteer to host.
I've heard that this year's team is particularly ill-behaved (recently I got an email asking parents to remind their kids not to throw other people's shoes in the port-a-potty during practice) so I shouldn't have been surprised when I saw an email about this week's carbo-load with this attached list of "house rules" from the host:
- No swearing
- No fighting
- Clean up after yourselves
- Don't give my parents a hard time
- There are chickens in my backyard. Don't be mean to them.
I'm a little concerned that there needed to be a special addendum on the email with these basic guidelines for civil behavior. So we probably won't be hosting a carbo-load at our house in the near future. And maybe I'll see if my daughter can borrow the helmet and shinguards from self-defense class when she goes, just in case.
—7—
We took a family bike ride on the rail trail on Memorial Day. I thought it was a great time, but the 14-year-old for whatever reason wasn't into it. She was lagging behind and asked if we could at least stop at the ice cream shop about 3.5 miles down the trail.
Our original plan wasn't to get ice cream, but if that's what motivated her then I guess I was willing to do it. Unfortunately, when we got to the ice cream place we saw that it had evidently gone out of business since the last time we were there.
We took a brief rest and then turned around to bike the 3.5 miles home, and immediately the 14-year-old's pedal broke off her bike.
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| The universe just had it out for the 14-year-old that day. |
She and I walked back to the abandoned ice cream place and waited for Phillip and the boys to bike back and come pick us up in the van. While we were waiting, we looked up other places where we could bike on a rail trail to an ice cream shop and found two options, so we'll try them out later this summer. Wish us luck. Especially the 14-year-old.
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