7 Quick Takes

___1___

Julianna’s spotlight.  Here’s a little slice of my life. She uses the toilet before nap and takes her shorts & underwear off. Because I don’t want to fight it, I let her go to bed like that. Afterward, I’m taking a shower and I tell her, “Julianna, put your clothes back on. They’re right there.” (Pointing.) She begins to take her shirt off. “No, Julianna, listen to me. I said put your pants on. I did not say anything about taking your shirt off.”  Giving me a hurt look, she begins to comply, and I head for the shower. When I come back out, her pants are gone, but her shirt are there in their place. (Throws hands in the air.)

We’ve realized we’ve been slacking off on the green tea. Maybe it was making more of a difference than we thought.

___2___

This is what I found the other day in my kitchen.

I don’t know…I just thought it was funny.

___3___

I needed to go up in weights for my workout, but I wasn’t anywhere close to jumping from 3 pounds to 5. With my history of muscle and joint issues I’m very cautious. So we bought some 1-pound wrist weights. This is the instruction card that came with them:

___4___

A couple of weeks ago, when Christian had the three older kids at the baseball game, I took Michael to the neighborhood pool. It sits just beyond a four-way stop sign, and when I approached the intersection, there was a car sitting at the southbound sign, waiting for us to cross. I took one step into the intersection with the push-car ahead of me, and then yanked Michael back in terror, because another car was flying around the stopped car and screaming through the intersection at fifty miles an hour. Yes, I mean fifty. Engine roaring like the pedal was floored. A deliberate high-speed running of a stop sign, with a toddler in the intersection. In case you’re wondering, it was four teenage boys. The one in the front passenger seat made eye contact with me as they passed.

Christian’s always twitting me about having to massacre every dandelion I find. I told him if I hadn’t stopped to pick dandelions along that walk, we’d have been in the middle of the intersection. Seriously scary stuff.

___5___

While we’re on the topic of young poorly-behaved whippersnappers, last week when we were out with the kids on campus for the big marching band concert, this guy was saying “G-d–n-something” right behind us. Somebody nudged him for his language and he said, “That’s why I didn’t cuss.” Uh, yeah. You were really restraining the cussing there, man.

Then we went downtown for frozen yogurt. As we were strapping kids into the van afterward, these college kids walked by, you know, strutting, mouthing off. I turned around and said coolly, “Please watch your language around the kids.”

I’m not actually sure what he said in response, and neither is Christian, but it was mumbly and low-pitched. Christian was laughing at me. “That was awesome,” he said.

___6___

Did you catch the study last week that found that people who grow up with more siblings are less likely to divorce? Hmmmm. Wonder why that might be. Maybe because they learn to deal with more personality types and handle more opposition in the formative years? (Clue: heavy dose of irony in this tone of voice. Not a big mystery at all.)

___7___

The last time I really reported my practice time was August 5th. So. Since then I have practiced 9 days (out of 18…ouch) and a total of 5 hours and 25 minutes. I don’t know if that’s good or pathetic.

Bonus: Nicholas has been asking lately for “moustachios.” It’s so funny we can’t make ourselves correct him to pistachios.

On to query and pitch writing….