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Friday, February 8, 2013

7 Quick Takes in February

1.  I saw an adorable his/hers tattoo on Pinterest this week, with a bird on her ring finger and a tree on his ring finger.  The tattoos were cool, but what I really loved was the quote at the bottom of the photo:

"If you were a bird, then I'd be a tree and you would come home, my darling, to me..."
 
So I did a little bit of spontaneous research (maybe I'm unschooling myself...) and found that the quote belongs to a song.  A song I cannot stop humming around the house all day.
 
Good luck to you; the song is precious and catchy.
 




2.  I wanna know which genius decreed that all kids' dishes -- you know? the cutesy, cartoonish, decorated frippery that encourages our little rebels to consume food each day? -- should be NOT dishwasher-safe. Why? Why did he decide that?  What parent has time to wash extra dishes each day? 

I'm not bitter.  But I totally think that frippery-designing guy is in cahoots with liquid dish soap manufacturers.  Palmolive and Dawn?  I'm on to you.  And in the meantime I'm secretly running our Disney Princess plates through the dishwasher in hopes that they'll crack and become obsolete.



3.  What's your favorite board book?  Even if this weren't the book Landon always chooses, Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown would take my cake.  I love every last bit of it.  Every time.  You?


 
 
4.  I'm planning a Valentine's Day play-date for the girls and a few of their friends.  A very few, I mean.  I don't want it to be a party, technically, because I'm positive they'll come home from school with a month's worth of sugar coursing through their veins, but I also want it to be fun.  So I'm thinking 4 or 6 sweet little screamers will be plenty, and I'm also thinking about cupcake decorating.  (Because glutton for punishment = me.)    But what else?  Just let them run wild?  Have an art project?  A game?  Help!
 
 
5.  The older I get, the more I realize how much of my Grandma I have hidden away in my soul.  (Only the best parts of her; the smudgy, shameful bits are all me.)  I remember going grocery shopping with her when I was little, and she'd go to the IGA for meat.  Just meat.  It had the best butcher, she said, and so she'd load me into the old-school shopping carts they had -- those carts that seemed a mile high, with a huge empty shelf on the bottom? -- and we'd tool around the entire store, but only buy meat.  And she went to a separate store for toilet paper and paper towels and laundry detergent.  Then finally to a favorite place for all the rest: produce and dairy and Multi-grain Cheerios. 
 
Yesterday, I went to three separate grocery stores.  One for produce.  One for dairy and eggs.  And one for everything else: bread and frozen pizza and Oreos. 
 
Oh, but don't worry: I'm keeping her old ways while integrating my own touches of modernism: I've begun buying my toilet paper and paper towels in bulk from Amazon.  I got 48 rolls of a GOOD brand of toilet paper for less than $19.  My grandma is congratulating me from paradise. 
 
 
 
6.  So here's a doozy. 
 
I was reading the other day at naptime, and happened to doze off.  This also happens to be my favorite thing about reading at naptime.  And it so happens that I plan my day around this eventuality.  So I was dozing, and on the edge of sleep where thoughts become so unrecognizably ridiculous that you know they're ridiculous, but when you try to latch on to one, it slips away like smoke.  I was on that edge.  I like it there.  Semi-consciousness pleases me.  But while balancing on the edge, I heard, very distinctly, my mom's voice.
 
"Sarah!  Sarah!  Oh, Sarah!"
 
So then I fell back from the edge and lost my sleepiness, because it was kind of freaky, right?  It was her voice, so clear and much louder than all the rest of my semi-conscious babble.  It was like she was shaking me awake.  I couldn't fall back asleep.  I kind of worried that some disaster had suddenly befallen her, but then I blew off the sensation in favor of reason: I don't live inside a novel; it was just brain waves skipping tracks, that's all.
 
Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw something shifty outside the window.  (Settle down, it's nothing scary -- )  White, dusty-looking flakes were flying all about.  It was just snow, but it took me so by surprise, not having been in the forecast and completely unexpected, that I couldn't understand what I was seeing.  Huge, fat flakes blew on gusty wind, swirling in our back yard like hot ashes above a kicked-over campfire. 
 
I talked to my mom a little bit later, and she told me that at the exact moment she noticed it was snowing, she'd had the urge to call me and tell me to watch.  We both adore snowfall.  But she couldn't get away from busyness at work to make the phone call.
 
I'm pretty much convinced now that I'm a telepath of some sort.  No biggie. 
 
 
 
7.  Mia's weekend news included such gems as:
 
"I went to gymnastics."
 
And, "We went to the super bowl." 
 
(A Super Bowl party is pretty much the same thing as the actual Super Bowl, yeah?)
 
But the best one: 
 
 
 
"I was so tired I droowled on my hand." 
 
She's wonderful, right?
 
 
 
Quick Takes are at Conversion Diary.  Stop over to join the party!
 

5 comments:

  1. Ha, I love these!

    That quote also seems like it's from a children's book. Runaway Bunny I think.

    You are one brave lady. I'd say do a heart decorating party!

    Yeah, pretty sure you're psychic.

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  2. Oh how I love reading your blog....even though it makes me miss you more *sigh* I am with you on the kids plates, I don't have them unless they are dishwasher safe (on the top rack only) and lets face it even those aren't....I've already had to pitch a few. Why can't they be microwavable though?! But really I'm about to just chuck them ALL because Savannah has a meltdown at every meal if she doesn't get the bowl/plate/ cup that she wanted....ayi yi yi, to be young and have such big problems. ;) About the party that's not a party.....Pinterest! Miss you friend and glad you got to see some snow fall! Oh and tell your mom hi, I miss her too ;)

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  3. Ahhhhh! That song! I'm going to have it on permaloop all day today.

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  4. omg, you have super powers! Actually, I was thinking that about the voluntary cupcake-decorating party, before I even got to the telepathy part!

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  5. That's a very sweet song. And I love the tattoos! Very cool. I look at tattoos on Pinterest all the time but I've no idea if I'll ever actually get one.

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Hmm...And how did that make you FEEL?