7 Quick Takes about How We're All Housecats, Parking Lot Naps, and Daily Schedules I Won't Be Using

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

—1—

This summer, my parents want to fly our kids out to stay with them for 9 days. They've done it before with just the older ones, but this time they're taking all of them.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS?

It means that Phillip and I will be alone in the house for over a week. No school pickups or soccer dropoffs or rides to a friend's house. No worrying about anyone except ourselves for over a week. We are still trying to wrap our heads around this information.

"What do you want to do while the kids are gone?" Phillip keeps asking me. And I tell him I don't know. We are indoor cats that have escaped outside: we don't know what to do with our newfound freedom and will probably end up just hiding under the porch until someone comes to get us.

—2—

I've more or less adjusted to the 50-minute round trip it takes to drop my son off at his new gymnastics gym, but sometimes it's a hard drive to make when I'm sleepy. I get the same highway hypnosis as when we're on a road trip.

One day this week I got so tired on the drive there, that I dropped him off and then pulled into the parking lot to take a nap in the van. 

Unfortunately, I only slept for 10 minutes before the pediatrician's office called to make an appointment for one of the kids.

—3—

Our 13-year-old daughter realized that next year her older brother will be graduating, and then she'll be the oldest in the house. They do a lot of goofing around, watching Marvel movies, and other teenage shenanigans I probably don't want to know about.

"It's going to be so boring!" she wailed. 

I pointed out "You've still got two younger brothers, you know, and they do grow up. Like, your older brother thought he'd be bored when the girls left for college, but now you're older and he hangs out with you. By the time he leaves, your younger brother will be older and then the two of you will hang out."

From the other room, the younger brother called out, "Yuck!"

Like I said, there's still some maturing to be done.

—4—

The other evening Phillip and I grabbed the 9- and 11-year-olds and took them on a slightly more successful fishing trip. 

One son caught two fish, and the other reeled in a fish but it escaped from his line as he was being pulled out of the water. Somehow I broke the reel of the fishing pole Phillip has had since he was 15, though. I wasn't even fishing, he just handed it to me to hold for a second while his hands were full.

—5—

ChatGPT is great for some things, but I'm finding that it's not as great for others. I recently watched a TED talk about time management that I couldn't quite figure out how to apply to my own life, so I talked it over with ChatGPT, fed it my to-do list, and asked it to make me a schedule. 

It came up with something that had me waking up at 6AM, didn't account for meals, and shrunk tasks to the time available regardless of whether it was realistic.

At the same time, Phillip was asking ChatGPT to help him design a training plan to reach his current running goal. On the first day, he practically collapsed and died trying to follow its instructions, which is exactly what would've happened to me if I'd tried to follow the to-do schedule it gave me.

I guess if you ask ChatGPT to do something, it will find a way to do it, whether it makes sense or not. Once, our daughter asked it "How many P's are in the word 'mayonnaise'?" and it kept telling her random numbers. It would only say there weren't any if she asked "Are there any P's in the word 'mayonnaise'?"

—6—

We've gotten a family gym membership for the summer, but it's not turning out to be anything like we thought it would be. 

When we signed up for the membership, we had two kids in mind who we thought would particularly love it. As it turns out, those two kids only go when we plant the idea inception-like in their minds earlier in the day. 

Meanwhile, another of our kids has surprised us by loving it so much that they go 6 days a week on their own volition and will bike there if there's not a car available. The staff all recognizes this child and just waves them in like a celebrity without asking for their membership information. 

Parenting is always a surprise, no matter how well you think you know your kids.

—7—

This has been quite a week. End-of-year everything has been happening. Recitals. Field trips. Finals. Graduation parties. Class teacher gifts. I helped spearhead a youth fundraiser at church to raise money for camp. We got our piano tuned and I had lunch with an old friend who's in town for a few days. 

Next week the kids are finally done with all of it, and then we will begin a different kind of crazy when everyone is home all the time and leaving their dirty dishes everywhere. Wish me luck!

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7 Quick Takes about a Permanent Case of the Flu, Tricking the Cats and Dogs, and Asking ChatGPT to Talk Down to You

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

—1—

All I've done this week is be sick. It sucks. The flu I thought I was over last week? That was false spring. 

I'm still hacking phlegm out of my throat most of the day, and I think I woke up with pinkeye this morning.

My husband, checking up on me from work.

I get about 5% better every day, but at this rate I'm going to be sick until July.

—2—

I just learned that woodpeckers have long tongues that wrap completely around their brain to protect it while they're hammering away at trees all day. 

Call me crazy, but I'm jealous. I've had a headache all week just from coughing so much. Do you know how much I could have used a built-in shock absorber?

—3—

I feel like I missed an opportunity by not writing down all the weird ways my kids have described various ailments and injuries for me to interpret over the years. 

One of my kids got hit in the throat with a lacrosse ball at school this week and when they got home and I asked how it was, they said, "My throat feels sparkly." I don't know what to do with that.

—4—

A friend who doesn't have a car right now found a mass on her cat, so she asked if I would give them a ride to the vet. The ride was short and I wore a mask, so hopefully she and her cat don't get the plague.

At the vet's office, attached to the ramp leading to the front door was a banner covered in smiling pets that said "this way for treats!" 

If Mittens were smart, she'd take one look at the banner and be like "Nope, this is 100% Hansel and Gretel. Turn the car around."

I thought for a split-second that it was funny they were luring the pets in with treats, but then I started laughing because pets can't read. Maybe they're trying to trick the owners?

—5—

Due to sleeping like garbage all week because I was sick, I finished the last several hours of my audiobook sleepytime reading of Pride and Prejudice, and loved it.

Now I'm looking for the best movie or TV adaptation to watch, and it seems like it comes down to the 1995 BBC series or the 2005 movie with Keira Knightly. 

It seems like the BBC series is the most faithful to the novel and the time period, but it's long. The movie is pretty with a lovely score and cinematography, but some of the things that made the novel great were lost while trying to make it palatable for a 21st century audience. (In the words of one person on Reddit, it was "okay, but Keira Knightly has the face of someone who knows what a cell phone is.")

So... I guess I'll just have to watch both.

—6—

I finally got my new mouthguard for nighttime teeth clenching, and it's amazing. I've scraped by with over-the-counter guards for years, not wanting to spend the money for a dentist-made custom one (which my insurance doesn't cover, by the way), but the OTC ones weren't cutting it anymore.

I decided to gamble on a mail-in custom guard that is a quarter of the price and had a money-back guarantee. It's been two nights and I can tell that it really helps, and it's way more comfortable than anything else I've ever used.

—7—

We're almost finished with school here. My 7th grader says she has good grades except for one okayish grade in math. She explained that she has a hard time with the format of some of the quizzes and the teacher's explanations aren't helping.

"I'm not the right person to ask, but your dad and your older sister are both great at explaining math," I said. "Or, if they're not around you can also ask ChatGPT. And then ask followup questions about what it says."

"Like, 'I'm pretty stupid, can you explain it dumber?'" She asked.

Yes, actually. In fact, I often start learning about something new by asking ChatGPT to explain it to me like I'm 5, and then go from there.

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7 Quick Takes about How to Take Pictures of Your Favorite Mom, Beautifying the Bathroom, and Living in a Wildflower Meadow

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

—1—

For the past few years, we've gone to the ocean on Memorial Day. In late May it's warm enough to be pleasant (only the bravest of us actually go in the water) and too early in the season to be crowded (parking is usually still free.) But it was a cloudy day and it's always windy at the beach, and I just knew I would be cold and miserable.

I convinced my family to make a Plan B, and we decided to make a day of going to a naval museum and get mochi donuts on the way home. But when our 17-year-old woke up sick, we didn't really feel it was right to toss a bottle of Tylenol at him with a "See ya tonight, try not to die!" so we made a Plan C and went with that.

We decided to take everyone else to a local park, grill hot dogs, and play wiffle ball and frisbee. We wouldn't be gone the whole day and we'd be close enough to run home if the 17-year-old needed anything. 

I had fun playing with the kids and enjoyed a nice nap in the sun.

Taken by my 13-year-old.

Why are these only pictures my family thinks to take of me? Heaven forbid they could leave a record of me doing literally anything fun or good as a mom. If it weren't for selfies, future generations would look through our family photos and think that I'd abandoned the family and left Phillip a single dad.

—2—

After our cookout at the park, the older kids had to go to work and Phillip and I took the younger kids fishing. Phillip says he learned to fish in late elementary school, just about the ages of our 2 youngest boys so it was the perfect time for them to learn.  

It wasn't a roaring success. They all retched at putting the worms on the hooks, one fell in the water, and all three kids got their hooks stuck in a tree.

The 11-year-old has been asking all week to go fishing again, so there must have been something positive in the experience. I'm just not sure what.

—3—

I'm so bad at drawing. I remember being frustrated at my lack of skill as a kid, and there's an infamous story of when my 2-year-old asked me to draw him a train and when I tried he started wailing "That's not a train! That's a pig-car!" (In my defense, a train does look like a car with a pig snout on the end.)

Anyway, Facebook apparently knows I need remedial drawing classes and has been showing me stuff like this:

I actually think this one is brilliant, and I'm thrilled that I could pass the Velocipedia test with flying colors now. I wouldn't have had a chance before.

—4—

For a couple of months, I've been ignoring something. At the midpoint of my sternum, just right of center, there's a tender spot. Twice I did a leaning-down-to-touch-my-toes kind of stretch and felt a searing pain accompanied by a hard knot in that place that took a minute to go away. Fearing a hernia, I ignored it until my next physical.

When I mentioned it to my doctor I learned that (1) it's not a hernia, yay, and (2) your lower ribs are called "false ribs" and "floating ribs." They're more flexible and mobile because they're attached to the cartilage of the ribs above them, so sometimes they can cause random pains in the exact place I was describing. 

So I guess no hernia surgery for me, which is good. My doctor examined it and told me nothing felt abnormal, so it was just a weird thing that hopefully won't happen again. Unless 43 is the age where doctors start dismissing all your concerns by saying, "Well, you are getting older" like my mom warned me about.

—5—

My kid's bathroom looks terrible. The floor is always covered in towels, the counter is always covered in hair paraphernalia, and the sink and mirror is always covered in toothpaste. I'm surprised the kids aren't ashamed to even go in there. I know I am.

But I recently ventured in to make some repairs. 

First, I replaced the nasty old toilet seat. It's not actually old, it just looks ancient and stained because our bathroom cleaner with bleach ate away half of the finish. Then I patched and repainted holes left over from the previous toilet paper holder that someone pulled out of the wall. Then I unclogged the sink and pulled out what looked like an entire cat's worth of hair from the drain. (We don't have a cat but we have three girls which is worse.)

Normally I don't do these things myself, I pester Phillip for months to do them. It's hard to justify learning how to do home repairs that Phillip already knows how to do, because he can do them three times as fast. It's kind of like how when he's writing an email, it's easier for him to yell, "Jenny, how do you spell 'alleviate'?" and write down whatever I say than to go find a dictionary and better himself by looking it up. We both have our areas of expertise, you know? But I guess it did pay to do it myself this time so I'll consider it in the future.

—6—

We are unintentionally participating in No-Mow May. I wanted the kids to go out and cut the grass on Memorial Day, but Phillip brought it up and then all the kids started chanting "No Mow May! No Mow May!" so fine. 

On the plus side, we have all sorts of pretty wildflowers in the yard now.

Left unchecked, these will spread and take over the entire yard. Shhhhh.

There's also a not-so-pretty circle of dead grass in the front yard from a leaf pile that my kids jumped in once last fall, then begged me to leave out instead of clearing away. I did, they played in it zero more times, and then it got left out too long and killed all the grass underneath it.

—7—

Remember how my 17-year-old got sick? Well, I woke up with it on Thursday and it was a doozy. I basically spent the next 32 hours in bed.

I felt too crummy to read so sadly, this was me.

By lunchtime on the second day, I felt okay enough to get up and do most of the stuff I normally do. It's just weird that it knocked my husband and 17-year-old out for almost four days, and I'm the one on immunosuppressants.

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7 Quick Takes about Shearing Sheep, Setting a Timer to Ask My Doctor Which Treatment Is Right for Me, and Going on the Colorless Diet

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

—1—

Have you ever seen a sheep shearing? Now I have.

I noticed a sign at a local farmstand advertising their sheep shearing so we decided to go check it out. I've never seen a sheep shearing before, but I was in complete awe of the old guy who looked like Joe Biden but didn't even seem winded after his second hour of wrangling 180-pound sheep into submission. 

Looks kind of brutal but I probably use more force trying to get my own kids to stay still when I cut their hair.

Also, the guy was shearing this sheep with a big pair of scissors, not an electric clippers. My hands alone would have gotten tired, letalone my knees and back with all the bending and kneeling.

"Are you going to be doing stuff like that when you're old?" I asked Phillip, knowing that he wants to run and be active until the day he drops dead.

Phillip shook his head and scoffed, "I can't do that now."

We took the boys around to see the other farm animals afterward, and they spent the longest time trying to convince the pigs to let them pet them.

If I've ever seen a pig look wary, but this is it.

—2—

Saw this in the store the other day.

Why do I love everything about this?

—3—

When I chose a timer sound for my phone, I picked a mellow piano tune that I hopefully wouldn't get annoyed at, because I set twenty timers a day to remind me to take kids to and from school and various activities.

My 19-year-old tells me that it "sounds like a prescription medication commercial for moderate to severe Chron's Disease."

I laughed, but actually, if you play this YouTube video of my timer sound while reading this patient testimonial from the Skyrizi website, you'll see that she's 100% right:

—4—

Happy birthday to me! I heard on the radio that my birthday was the second coldest May 22nd in this area in recorded history. And you know how I love the cold.

In better news, though, I got this birthday wish email from my dentist's office which was absolutely not written with AI.

—5—

Phillip and I have a weekly tradition we like to call "the executive meeting." We go through our calendar, looking at every night's activities so we know who has to be home when and who's driving kids where. (It's okay if you didn't understand that sentence. Executive meetings are an incredibly confusing process.) 

Preferring a more by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to life, Phillip hates the executive meeting. But I really need it or I end up shaking my fist at the sky and cursing Phillip's name at 5pm because I didn't know he had a late work meeting and I'm stuck figuring out how to get three kids to three separate activities by myself in an hour.

It's been several weeks since our last executive meeting and that always makes me antsy, so I asked Phillip sweetly on Sunday afternoon, "Soooo... later today do you want to have an executive meeting, or be murdered?"

He smiled and told me, "I didn't realize there was a choice. I'd rather be murdered."

—6—

This is what it looks like when you let a child fill up their own plate at a church potluck. Not a vegetable to be seen for miles. 

All beige, all carbs, all the time.

All I'm saying is, I've seen more balanced meals in my life.

—7—

I laughed my ever-living head off at this Modern Family clip that showed up in my YouTube feed, and then I showed it to Phillip who laughed his head off, too. Because it is absolutely both of us, from Phil's "I'd rather not" (see Take #5) to the kids' disgusting bathroom to the broken step to Claire's perfect last line.

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7 Quick Takes about Prehistoric Visitors, Unexpectedly Useful Degrees, and What Happens When You Kidnap Stupid People

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

—1—

It's apparently egg-laying season, and the snapping turtles are out wandering around looking for a good spot. Phillip saw one on the road while running, and then we randomly spotted one in our driveway the next afternoon.

The 16-year-old was coming home soon and we didn't want him to accidentally run over it with the car since it was right in his parking spot, so the 13-year-old ran and got a cone to put next to it. But she didn't want to get too close, because snapping turtles look pretty creepy and we'd never seen one this close up before.

They're like a cross between a dinosaur and Jabba the Hut. The way they move their head around looks not quite real. And they have creepy eyelids that slide up over their eyes when they blink.

When we came out to look at her, she went belly-flat to the ground and just looked at us unnervingly for a while. After we went back inside for 5 or 10 minutes, she decided it was safe and high-tailed it to the woods. She was pretty fast, for a turtle.

—2—

For Mother's Day, Phillip and the kids made a fancy dinner of quiche, homemade crescent rolls, and a Waldorf salad. They also got sparkling cider (not even our standard issue New Year's Martinelli's, it was something fancy imported from Spain) and served it in goblets with our good china.

The food was all really good, but probably the highlight for the kids was that the bottles of sparkling cider came with real corks that we opened outside and let go flying into the yard. My mom found one of the corks a few days later while looking around the woods to see if she could find a snapping turtle nest anywhere.

—3—

A friend of ours went to France and brought home some French candies with jokes on the wrappers. Kind of like French Laffy Taffy, I guess.

My oldest two daughters who speak a fair amount of French explained some of the jokes to us, but there were a few that even they weren't sure about, and Google translate wasn't much help, either:

I guess humor often relies on puns that don't make sense in another language, which is why a video I once watched says that a political translator sometimes relies on the line: "The president has just told a very funny joke that is untranslatable. Please laugh now."

—4—

Our teenage son has been struggling with an increasingly growing collection of health issues that have gotten so serious we've had to meet with the school to talk about accommodations for his absences and exhaustion in class. I didn't really want to joke about it on the blog in case it turned out to be leukemia or something, but we know what it is now. And it's really dumb.

After being handed what felt like random guesses over the last 5 months (various doctors have ordered bloodwork and X-rays, referred us to a gastroenterologist and a cardiologist, and told us that he was depressed,) Phillip finally started wondering if it was side effects from a medication our teen has been taking for the last few years. We took him off of it, and he was himself again within the week.

I'm relieved to finally know what's been going on, but mad that the one who figured it out is NOT THAT KIND OF DOCTOR. This isn't the kind of situation that requires a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. 

Now we just need to find a replacement medication for our son that doesn't have all the side effects. I can only assume we'll have to seek someone with a Ph.D. in English literature to help with that, because I only have a bachelor's degree.

—5—

After many faithful years of service, our slingback patio chairs are all broken. We started out with eight, and now there's only one left. So we're in the market for new patio chairs, but I'm having trouble making any decisions.

Someone tell me, what patio furniture is durable but also stylish and comfortable? All the pictures I see online look like you took the world's most luxurious living room and just plonked it outside, which looks pretty but it's terribly impractical. By the end of the summer it would be a soggy, faded mess, unless you want your new full-time job to be ferrying around patio cushions every time you want to sit down.

But everything without cushions either looks uncomfortable or ugly. Sometimes both.

Is there a middle ground, or should we just buy another set of slingback chairs and replace them 10 years from now?

—6—

While my mom is here visiting, she took me and the 18- and 20-year-olds to an escape room. The premise was that you'd been kidnapped, and they brought you into the escape room blindfolded and handcuffed. You had 30 minutes to free yourself, figure out all the puzzles, and escape the room. 

It started out well: I found the keys to the handcuffs right away and relatively quickly got to work setting everyone else in our group free. But then we couldn't figure out what to do afterward and asked for a clue. The person over the loudspeaker hesitated and said "...Are you sure you searched the room thoroughly?"

Turns out there was a full-size briefcase sitting barely concealed underneath a cot, so maybe we weren't off to as good of a start as I thought.

Still, we ended up escaping from the room with 9 minutes to spare, and only asked for two more hints. (Neither of them were facepalms like the first one.)

—7—

It's been almost a month, and all of our Easter decorations are still up. Maybe putting them away will be my weekend project.

In my defense, the boxes where we store the holiday stuff are hard to get to because the storage area is full of stair treads and risers waiting to go on the basement steps. 

So it's not just our holiday decor we can't stay on top of, it's our DIY basement finishing project, too.

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7 Quick Takes about Facebook Jail, Dryer Disasters, and the Hidden Costs of Multitasking

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

—1—

My recent post selling a tech gadget on Facebook Marketplace was suspended for violating the rule about counterfeits. The listing did say "Apple" in the title, but it was an Apple product so I didn't think that would be a problem.

When I appealed the decision, I had to choose from a list of statements explaining why I was appealing. I selected "this listing isn't against the rules" and it gave me another list of statements:

• This is not offensive in my region
• It was to raise awareness
• It was a joke

I wasn't sure how to defend an offensive comment I never made. I'm just trying to get rid of some crap we don't use around the house. 

Anyway, Facebook reinstated my listing a few days later. (I guess "this is not offensive in my region" was the right response??) Facebook has always been a little unhinged like that. When I first set up my profile, Facebook flagged me three times insisting I wasn't a real person, and I have no idea why that happened, either.

—2—

Our current computer desk is one that we saw sitting on the curb with a free sign about 5 years ago, and it's about as comfortable as the high school bleachers at this point.

I'm not completely convinced that's a bad thing, because it keeps the kids from sitting in front of the computer playing Minecraft until their eyeballs dry up, but it also isn't terribly nice for me when I'm trying to get things done.

So I was searching for desk chairs and found this beauty of a Photoshopped product image. It's an oversized chair, but not that oversized. The model looks like a garden gnome.

—3—

During family scripture study one night, I asked the kids a personal question. I just wanted them to think about it, but not share it out loud with everyone else. "When you have your answer," I said, "put your finger on your nose."

It was silent for a moment while everyone thought about it, and then the 11-year-old asked, "Did you say 'on' or 'in'?"

Actually, I had the distinct feeling someone was going to say that. I just wasn't sure who.

—4—

My 8- and 10-year-old share a laundry hamper and I didn't discover a few non-clothing items in the load until after it had already gone through the washer and dryer.

Some items, like the silicon pop-it toy and Lego, were not a big deal. 

The pen was.

Ignore the band-aid stuck to the vent. They probably put that in the laundry, too.

Some clothes were ruined. Their bedsheets got the worst of it, but I guess that's not too bad considering no one really sees their sheets (which look like Jackson Pollock paintings now.) 

The real problem was the inside of the dryer, because the ink stains were severely stubborn. Rubbing alcohol did nothing. Magic Eraser, either. Looking it up on Reddit was no help: it only suggested rubbing alcohol and Magic Eraser, but it at least made me laugh when a third person said "Put a bunch of white paper in there and turn on the dryer, I heard that's how the Twilight series was written."

I ended up (mostly) getting the ink out with a secret magic cleaning product I have called Barkeeper's Friend and a green scrubby, although it also took off a little of the finish inside the dryer. It took two days because it was at such a tedious and awkward angle.

—5—

The next day, I made a huge stupid mistake. I put an article of clothing in the bathroom sink to soak, but instead of standing there doing nothing while the sink was filling up with water, I thought I'd go turn on the shower and let the water heat up while I went back to the sink to turn off the tap. BUT I FORGOT TO GO BACK, YOU GUYS. I just hopped in the shower while the sink overflowed for like 10 minutes.

The two seconds I saved by multitasking was definitely not worth the 45 minutes of mopping up pools of water all over the bathroom counters, floors, and inside the vanity drawers. I couldn't even wash and dry the towels because the dryer was still covered in ink!

Water also leaked downstairs, but luckily it was in the unfinished storage area of the basement. Actually, the only thing that got wet was a pile of books that I wanted to get of but Phillip didn't. We were at a standstill on that and tabled the issue by stacking them in the basement until later, but I guess now a decision has been made, hasn't it?

—6—

I clench my teeth at night in my sleep. I had a custom mouthguard from the dentist to wear at night, but someone stepped on it and cracked it in half about 10 years ago and I've been wearing over the counter mouthguard ever since. They're just not as good, though, so I've been thinking about a custom guard again.

But they're so expensive, on the order of $800, and dental insurance covers nothing. (Why? Is it really cheaper to cover crowns for cracked teeth?)

So I decided to try something middle-of-the-road. This week I got my putty and trays from a mail-order company, and now I have to make a mold of my teeth so they can send me back a custom guard.

I'm sure I'll do just as good a job as the professionals who went to school for 8 years learning how to do this.

—7—

Did anyone watch the Met Gala? I didn't, but I saw a highlight highlight reel and it did not disappoint.

My absolute favorite was André 3000, and his attitude in this interview was perfection:

Everyone keeps talking about the piano, but I want to know more about the Glad Heavy Duty Force Flex that he's carrying all his important stuff around in. That was the real star of his outfit, in my opinion.

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7 Quick Takes about Organizing Just for Fun, Scary Toads, and When Arbor Day Takes a Morbid Turn

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

—1—

At the tail end of my trip, my sister-in-law mentioned some major home reorganization she wanted to do before having her second baby this summer (i.e: declutter her entire craft room, transport it to a "craft corner" in the basement, and convert the craft room into a nursery.)

Since I can't think of anything more fun than decluttering and organizing, I immediately volunteered for that job and spent all day with her. I think everyone else went hiking to a waterfall or something, I don't know. I'm positive I had a better time with the label maker and the two huge bins we filled up with donations. 

Another sister joined us later in the day to help move things around, and then she sanded and painted furniture while we were making room in the kitchen for baby bottles and supplies. We got a ton done. I only wish I was that productive in 8 hours at home.

—2—

On the way back, I spotted this upscale-looking shop in the airport. It's like backwards Temu, both in pronunciation and also how everything is expensive instead of priced like it fell off the back of a truck.

I did not buy anything there.

—3—

The next few days were the usual routine of coming back and being overwhelmed with my daily life of driving a million little people to a million activities and working my tail off to maintain a marginally clean house while surrounded by a bunch of people who couldn't care less.

But just like always, it gradually gets better over the next few days until I'm not sure whether it's because the kids went feral while I was gone or because I just forgot what our daily life was like. Honestly, it's probably some of both. But I'm adjusting. 

—4—

My college freshman is applying for summer jobs and she said that a few of them required her to take a personality test. 

Which is weird, because it's not like she's not applying to be a mid-level marketing executive. If she passes the personality test, she'd be seating tables and taking orders at a neighborhood casual dining franchise. 

Here's an example of one of the questions: 

I'm not sure how to answer this one, or even what the question is getting at. Is it asking whether you're a carefree retiree, or whether you consistently choose inappropriate tires for the terrain you're biking on but don't let that bother you? 

—5—

Mobile check depositing is way more convenient than the old-school method of driving to the bank and physically handing it to a teller (all you have to do is upload a picture,) but I can't seem to get myself to try it.

If you ask me, I'll say that my bank is near the grocery store so it's just as easy for me to pop in and deposit checks when I'm driving by, but the real reason is that I don't trust online deposit. It seems too magical. What if it doesn't work? Unless I physically give them my check and watch them run it through the little machine, it feels like I'm just expecting them to take my word for it and put money in my account.

I'm aware that a distrust of new technology is how getting old starts.

However, my 20-year-old recently got a sizable tax refund check and said she wanted to physically go to the bank to deposit it just in case, which made me feel better. But maybe she's also getting old. She already doesn't understand any of the things my middle schooler is coming home and saying is cool.

—6—

I've been working through a long list of boring tasks that need to be done, including cleaning and fixing the trash can. It took a while and was kind of a gross job, but at least I got to be outside on a nice day. And now the trash can lid closes all the way!

When I was putting everything away afterward, though, I got scared to death. I was rolling up the hose, bent over with my hand on the crank, and suddenly the wheel turned toward me and there was a toad flying at my face from 4 inches away.

It was a big fat one, too.

—7—

Remember the tree my third grader brought home for Arbor Day? It may have sat there for over a week, but we finally planted it and it was probably the most thoughtfully we've ever placed one of the Arbor Day trees the school has sent home with each of our 6 kids.

My daughter and I carefully triangulated its position, taking turns having one person standing in the spot and the other person observing it from different angles to see if we liked how it looked. And then I planted it with my son that day.

"When it gets big, will it be a good climbing tree?" he asked.

"For your kids, maybe," I answered.

He looked almost as disappointed as when I was wondering out loud if the fully mature tree would take up too much of the yard and Phillip said, "Don't worry about it, we'll be basically dead by then, anyway."

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