7 Quick Takes (Volume 146)

1) My sister gave me some peppers and cucumbers out of her garden (and I don't think she read about my produce woes ). There were two kinds of peppers. One I recognized as jalapenos and know from experience to handle with care. The other was a long green stringy looking pepper I'd never seen before.


I was not intimidated. I love hot spicy. If it doesn't make your nose run it isn't spicy in my book. I was excited to stir-fry it with some onions and shrimp to wrap in a tortilla for dinner. I knew my family would not be as adventurous, so I only made enough for me. I used only a portion of one jalapeno. I know how fresh ones pack a punch and then cut up about half of another pepper. It didn't smell hot, so I kept throwing a little more in. I threw it all in a pan with some onions and olive oil and it smelled divine. I got excited about my new adventure for dinner and while stirring the taco meat I made for everyone else, I threw the shrimp into the pan of peppers.

The minute the shrimp hit the pan, some strange sort of fume rose, choking me up. My eyes watered, my nose got drippy and I started coughing. And coughing and coughing. Once I stirred the concoction up it got better, but when Kevin came in the kitchen, he started coughing. And one by one, as each family member entered the kitchen, they immediately broke into coughing fits.

"Watch out," Ladies Man squeaked out, "the kitchen is toxic."

We got a good laugh out of it--enter the kitchen, cough, exit the kitchen, stop, enter the kitchen, cough, exit the kitchen, stop--and the kids were shocked I actually planned on eating it. It was delicious and not that hot really, but baby, did it send out some fumes. I haven't tried using the peppers since, but I'm not done with them. Any ideas on how to use them without gassing out my family?

2) We've had more laughs this week about Ladies Man's size. Get a load of these two pics. The first picture is my four-year-old nephew playing Superman with Ladies Man whose feet as are big as his entire torso. See Ladies Man's toe sticking out by his shoulder?


The next picture comes from band camp. This one makes me smile. Isn't it funny?


3) How about a lesson in teenage vernacular? Here are a few new words Drama Queen and Ladies Man taught me this summer.

janked--messed up as in "That kid is janked." Not sure why we need another phrase for messed up, but whatever.

chi-mo--child molester, as in "Geez, Dad, that look on your face made you look like a chi-mo." Yeah, not crazy about that one myself.

Oh, and I also learned a new search engine thing you can do on your cell phone. You can text any question to ChaCha (242242) and it will give you an answer like Google. When I texted the question, "What is ChaCha?" I got this answer.

"ChaCha is a service where human guides answer your questions. Just call or text for free. ChaCha is ad-supported. Got another Q? *Win $50K! Txt SOLOW2 to 23687."

and

"We send 2 OR more texts back 2 ur questions, including ads. We never send u spam AND we don't SHARE ur personal info. Ads always START WITH an *."

Not crazy about putting my cell phone number in some "human guides" hands, but I see how it could be useful in certain situations. I tried using it on our way to Lincoln the other night to find a restaurant, but it couldn't locate it for me. And for the fun of it, we asked a question about married couples and it came back with survey information that sort of answered the question. When we couldn't tell Drama Queen exactly what we asked (I mean, she really didn't want to know, if you get my drift), she got annoyed.

Drama Queen: I should have never told you about that.

Apparently now I am janked.

4) We have this hot water dispenser in our kitchen that automatically dispenses hot water at the push of the handle--we're talking almost boiling, the perfect temperature for tea (yay!). Last week the handle broke and wouldn't shut off. The water ran until it got cold. The only way to get it to stop was to actually turn off the cold water under the sink (I know. It makes no sense.). So now we have this strange phenomenon with our faucets in the kitchen. When you turn the main faucet on cold you get nothing.


When you turn the main faucet to hot you get water than eventually turns hot.


But when you put the main faucet handle in the middle, you get water out of both spouts!


It's the best of all worlds without racking up a huge plumbing bill. I may live with this hillbilly situation for a while.

5) Do you think I should be worried about Ladies Man becoming a food hoarder?


He's got that bag clipped to his pocket!

6) Miss Innocent One has been filling her time doing craft projects. She's made some cool things, but always leaves remnants of her work on the living room carpet. So the other day I asked her to vacuum our enormous living room, a task each of the kids groans upon being assigned. Much to my surprise, she didn't complain, but got out the vacuum and got to it. A few minutes later she was back in the kitchen putting it away.

Me: Uh, did you do a good job?

Miss Innocent One: Yeah. I got all the paper.

Me: You were supposed to do the whole room, not just get the slivers of paper you left behind.

Miss Innocent One: Ugh. But why? It looks clean.

Me: But is it?

She stopped for a moment and gave me puppy eyes. I strategically returned with raised eyebrows. We locked stares until she couldn't take it anymore.

Miss Innocent One (dragging the vacuum behind her into the living room): Fine. Be a mother.

One battle down, 5,298,331 to go!

7) Look what Drummer Boy did to commemorate another year of band camp.


He shaved off ALL HIS HAIR! Wow. You can imagine what Drama Queen had to say about that (think of the new phrases you've been taught)!

And with that we better call it quits before it gets really ugly. Find more Quick Takes at Conversion Diary. Have a great weekend, friends!