1. Buying plastic garbage bags is a waste of money, you can just use the paper bags from WinCo. Need to throw away something wet....double bag.
2. Liquor stores always have plenty of boxes
3. Meat can never be cooked enough
4. It's ok to give away family recipes, cause unless you're family you will be magically cursed and no matter how hard you try, the recipe will fail
5. Anything in a recipe that is called for, that's under a half-cup, and you don't already have in the cupboard is an unnecessary ingredient
6. You don't need to go to the doctor, so don't bother asking
7. You do need to brush your teeth or else all hell will unfold
8. Don't go skiing with your father
9. Packaging tape is the one resource in life you should feel free to waste with wild abandon. Extra points for using it around the holidays
10. There's a special place in hell reserved for Instant-Grits.
Most of these things were, or course, taught indirectly. But I was thinking back to a post that my sister Genuine Draft did about things she learned from our father. The one that stuck out to me was that a volleyball is a delicate piece of sporting equipment. Which it is of course, but I like her can eerily remember the many number of times someone in our family or church group would go to kick a volleyball and my father would stop and recite the volleyball speech. It makes me wonder where that speech was handed down from and how long it's been traveling. My mother was raised by her grandmother, which I find extra fun because it means a whole generation was skipped in her youth. Almost like a member was missing from the "telephone" line and everything is a bit less garbled.
Several of the things I learned from my mother are frugal tips for living. Raising eight kids I know she had her work cut out for her making a dollar stretch in order to keep us all fed and cared for. I joke about us never going to the doctor..but I think it's totally true. My mom always counted on us to resilient and she knew how to administer Robitussin. Between those two things we were a pretty healthy bunch. The one time a doctor was really needed was when Fletch flew out of the apple tree and broke his arm. In that case surgery was required. However I'll be damned if my mom didn't first try to take care of the problem using packaging tape (#9). That's another story for another day.
A few thing I learned from her...like over-cooking meat, and the insane amount of tape used on packages, I still need to get to the bottom of.
I'm facing a time in life where I've got student loan payments looming and it sorta feels like I was given the 8 kids and now I've got to pay for them. I'm troubled deciding how to feel about sacrificing for my education. I'm a selfish single person who just wants to do what I want to do. Thankfully my new education has provided a new job that I love, and I can return back to the system the money I had to borrow in order to get where I am.
I guess that's something else I've learned from my mom. Sacrificing for important things is really worth it. It pays off in the end and makes life worthwhile.
2 comments:
We have a random volleyball that turned up in our yard one day. Greta and Jade always called it a soccer ball and would kick it around the yard. I told them that they shouldn't do that when Gramps was visiting.
In our women's vb at the stake center they have added a kicking rule that it counts as a hit. I don't think your dad would like that much.
Post a Comment