—1—
Some big news around here is that the kids' rooms got new carpet installed! It was at least 5 years overdue, especially in the boys' room.
The 12-year-old's comment when he went up to check out the new carpet was: "Wow, it's so nice! And it's not gross!"
That was a shining endorsement, and also the reason they're not allowed to eat up there anymore.
The whole thing was a pretty smooth process, not counting the way that they threw the old carpet and carpet pad out of the second-story windows and completely smashed our flowers.
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| Still worth it, in my opinion. |
— 2—
The newest battle in motherhood that I'm having is towels. Whenever I go into the kids' bathroom (which is as infrequently as possible, to be honest), the towel rack looks like it's about to break free from the wall.
Every time the kids use a new towel they just hang it up over the old one, and when they run out of bath towels they just move on to the beach towels. They've all done their own laundry since the age of 8, but somehow I failed to stress that the towels they get dirty with their bodies are also laundry, and therefore their responsibility.
No idea if this will work, but I labeled each hook with the kids' names and explained that on penalty of death only one towel is allowed on their hook, and if they're about to hang a second one on it then the first one needs to go in their laundry.
—3—
I've been strength training for over a year now, and wow has it made a difference. In two ways.
First of all, it changed my form pretty dramatically in every day life. I don't think I could bend over and pick something up with a curved back now if I tried. My brain just wouldn't let me do it.
Second of all, I don't get yelled at during my yearly physicals anymore to put on some weight. I've gained almost 10 pounds of muscle and parts of me are toned that I didn't even know were muscles. I used to watch The Emperor's New Groove and think I was going to end up looking like Yzma; now I watch it and wonder if I'm actually going to be Kronk.
I love Kaleigh Cohen, the strength training YouTuber I've been hooked on since last April. I don't know how people can stand those terrible HIIT workout videos with nothing but beeps to tell you when to switch moves, and the leader creepily does the whole workout in silence with music playing over it. Blech. I need ENTERTAINMENT. And this is definitely one thing that Kaleigh does well. Here's an example from the beginning of one of her videos:
—4—
My stepmom, mom, and brother are here for the 18-year-old's high school graduation. We've been having a great time. The other day we went on a walk through the woods and right at the moment when we stopped to enjoy this view, saw a blue heron skim over the surface of the water.
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| Heron not pictured, I'm not that fast. |
—5—
In preparation for his graduation ceremony, my high school senior had a graduation rehearsal this week.
"How did it go?" I asked when he came home.
He shrugged. "You just walk across and if someone holds out their hand, shake it; if they hold out something for you, take it. It's not that deep."
He was relieved when their second practice was cancelled; apparently they'd done a phenomenal job with all the shaking and taking.
—6—
Phillip does the household meal planning but he forgot when he did it this week that we were having 3 extra people staying with us, plus my son's girlfriend came over and joined us for dinner one night, so we had to rework the plan.
I was thinking about stopping at the grocery store on the way home from dropping off my 14-year-old and her friends somewhere, so while I had them in the car I asked, "We have a bunch of people at our house tonight and I'm not sure what to feed them for dinner, what are some good meals for 10 people?"
I was expecting them to give the same three answers that my kids give when I ask these types of questions ("food," "stuff," and "I don't know,") but one of them immediately spouted off about eight different crowd-friendly meal ideas and I was flabbergasted.
"Those are great ideas," I said, "Do you have a big family? Do you do big dinners a lot?"
"No, I just like to answer questions."
"Well, I appreciate that. It's hard when you ask for opinions and everyone says 'I don't know.' I bet your mom really likes that."
"Umm... I'm not always good at answering my mom's questions."
So it's not just my kids, then.
—7—
My mom got hearing aids since the last time she was here, so I was asking her about them. I learned that you actually shouldn't wait to get hearing aids, because if you wait too long then the parts of your brain that process certain frequencies of speech atrophy permanently and getting hearing aids will be less effective.
I shared this with Phillip, and knowing that my hearing is already a little worse than his, he said, "Maybe you should just get hearing aids right now."
I considered it, then gave the only response I could: pretend not to hear him and say "What?"
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