7 Quick Takes

--1--

So you made it to Black Friday. Are you Christmas shopping? After eating pie for breakfast, I'm off to visit a friend today, kids in tow. I don't fight in the stores for bargains. I'd rather just jump in on those last minute online bids like all the other introverts or maybe even do without.

--2--

I am considering renaming my son Mr. Smartypants. After teaching himself to read and not telling me about it until after we'd gone to war over it, now it's all a great big joke. We've modified his reading program to a speech program, and he's continually finding ways to outfox me. The last successful attempt was teaching him how to make the short a sound clearly. It went like this:

Momma points to the letter a, "Show me how you say this?"
"Uh."
"You know this sound."
"Ah."
"What's the sound it makes?"
"Aayy!"
"Not the name, the sound. What's the sound?"
"Uh!" *giggle*
"The sound of this letter, honey!"
*giggle* "Ah!" *giggle*
"Quit fooling around, please. Say the sound."
"Aayy!" *dies laughing*
"Not the na...oh!" I slap my head as it dawns on me that he's said all the sounds he knows an a can make except the short a sound. "You got me, Mr. Smartypants! You got me!"

His middle name might need to be Stinker. Smartypants Stinker Martin.

--3--

Saying goodbye...

He's not always a little stinker, though. I've been cleaning out my baby gear to give to an expecting friend. She'd had to jettison hers when she moved her big family into a tiny house. My Boppy Pillow, the one that makes breastfeeding easier, came out of storage and went through the wash to prepare it for her. Simon found it on top of the boxes of baby clothes waiting to be loaded into the van. He brought it to me, put it around my waist, laid his head on it and sighed. I rubbed his back saying, "I remember, too, buddy." It was a sweet way to say goodbye to that part of our family life.

--4--

On an entirely different note, in case you missed this little gem, Marc Barnes over at The Bad Catholic wrote on Nothing. It's definitely something! It's "Better Than Nothing."

"The Joker is cooler than Batman.
It’s a problem of poetry more than anything else."

"A killing spree may shock society, but it is a boredom to the universe, who ultimately kills everyone. To objectify a woman into a sex object might give men a thrill, but it is pathetic to the universe, who is busy rendering her into a corpse."
Read more...

Editor's Note: Please be so kind as to remember that Marc ignores all death threats unless they are submitted in Iambic Pentameter.

--5--

The day after Thanksgiving is an excellent time to talk about the higher qualities of drudgery (especially if you've read that post from Number 4). I don't like doing dishes and yet I must. And by hand. I can't explain it beyond saying there is something redeemable in the very act of restoring temporary order to a busy kitchen. Suds therapy, I guess. My husband and I both find the quiet moments with warm water and suds mundane, soothing and restorative. "Let me wash the dishes!" and "I need to go do dishes!" are words heard often in our home during periods of high stress. Please take no offense if I take a dishrag and a bottle of Dawn in hand if we are drowning in a discussion of our messy lives. It is no criticism of your housekeeping. I am merely attempting to bring order to the Universe by restoring order somewhere I can actually reach.

--6--

I guess it is no mistake that I've taken to placing my prayer requests list within sight of my kitchen sink. Currently there are two divorces and one breakup on it to pray for. Order from chaos, indeed. Some things are beyond the restorative powers of warm water and bubbles, so I hand them over, sometimes several times daily.

--7--

My hero!

On a smaller note, my husband has figured out a way to fit our refrigerator into our kitchen. The spot in our farmhouse kitchen was too small for a modern fridge, but with a judicious use of a sawzall saw and the loss of a few inches of counter space, my work triangle will no longer include ducking into the laundry room! Whoot!