7 Lazing About Takes

7 Lazing About Takes May 27, 2016

One
Today we will have to go remedy the need of a swimsuit for the oldest child, who, unaccountably, grew since last summer. It should be super fun. I like clothes shopping for swimsuits for myself (joke) and so of course it will be delightful to go with a young teenager who has more opinions than she has years. Even more fun will be all the other children swirling around asking for stuff. I love that.

Two
Yesterday I sat on a couch and read half a book. I kid you not. I literally sat on a couch and read whole pages of words written by some guy. It’s the Patheos book club book so I’m going to write about it, prolly. Still, it was a couch, and a book.

Three
Also, a lot of eggs broke so I muddled them into a Dutch Baby. I love saying that. I don’t know if it was really a Dutch Baby since I was only guessing and didn’t bother about a recipe. Basically it was sort of Yorkshire Pudding except I added sugar to the batter and let the little girls “help”. And then there was no syrup so it had to be lathered with whipped cream.

Four
Just as an aside (which it really isn’t, since this is a compilation of a whole bunch of asides), is there anything more irritating than muscling yourself through a store and having grandfatherly older men stopping you every three seconds to exclaim over all your “little helpers” and then chuckling happily. I mean, I totally get that I’m the jerk in this scenario for barely gathering up a tepid smile. And I get that these nice men (or is it always the same man? In every grocery store in the country?) probably both miss their grandchildren and want to tweak other people knowing that little children aren’t even remotely “helpful”. I get it. I get it. But it still makes me rage and plot in vain. So much so that I’m totting up the minutes for when I can stop a young mother in her harassed grocery store concentration and coo over her “mommy’s little helper”. It’s the same plotting I do for getting to be retired and joining the alter guild.

Five
Matt is super happy because he found a real gym where people really work out and don’t just sort of hang about gazing at each other and exchanging phone numbers. He goes in and everyone, you know, is working out, and then he comes back. He said it’s great because the equipment even looks used. This is a huge blessing, from my perspective. I didn’t love last year how he would come back and relay anecdotes of the gym culture. He described fancy, thin, married ladies “working out” with trainers and flirting with everyone in sight. And men strutting around interrupting other people’s work outs to show off something or other. “Want to go with me?” he would ask every day, furthering the meme of wifely failure because not only do I not want to go, I don’t want to work out at all. “Oh thanks,” I always said, “I’ll stay here and ‘do my weights’.” By which I mean that I will lie on the floor with a five pound weight in each hand watching Jillian Michaels make me hate her more.

Six
I am going to start dragging Elphine off for a daily walk, though. I feel we should walk together. It would be good for us. Plus I found an excellent pair of shoes that look as if they are good for walking. They aren’t really, being both leather and expensive. But they will look well as I try to drown the reality that I am taking some kind of exercise.

Seven
And on that note, I will arise and search out some more caffeine. Go check out some other and better quick takes. Tomorrow there will probably be a podcast, and throughout the month I will probably carry on with all manner of fluffy writing. Maybe I will be stricken with the desire to write something of consequence, but probably not, because I’m supposed to be working on my book. Cough. Totally going to get going on that today.


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