What I learned this winter

Linking up again today with Emily P. Freeman to share a baker's dozen bits of new insight, in varying degrees of nonpracticality.


1.  Stevia can make a tastable dust cloud 12 feet away from a spill.


Jason recently went through a Stevia phase for his coffee station just around the corner from our bed, and one morning he dropped the can.  Moments later I was licking my lips and needing to brush my teeth.


2.  Have the child put their tooth pillow outside the bedroom door.


This was actually Caleb's idea, and so brilliant I wish I had thought of it years ago.  He said he didn't want the tooth fairy to scare him when she came in in the middle of the night, so he set his tooth pillow outside his door in the hall, like a little mailbox.  Not only is no child frightened by a midnight intruder, but the midnight intruder also doesn't have to tiptoe around pointy Legos while holding her breath so as not to wake the snaggle tooth.  Win for everybody!

3.  British Royal Guardsmen are taught to pee their pants and faint at attention.


It's true.  "Think of England and don't leave your post."  Hahaha


Also, I watched this video about five times of Her Majesty's Guard bungling their marching orders and I laughed harder each time.

4.  FAO is a bad place to Christmas shop.


You'd think it's a good idea, but no.


5.  You're supposed to orient the bobbin like a "9" before you put it in the sewing machine.


I didn't even know it mattered which way the bobbin went, much less know that in a front-loading machine like mine, the string is supposed to come off the right side, so it forms a "9."


This explains a small portion of my sewing ineptitude.

6.  I can't do a single push-up.


...as of a month ago. But I'm pleased to report that having worked up from a few "girl" push-ups to twenty, and then to a single "real" push-up, I can now complete two real push-ups on a good day.

7.  What snorkeling is like.  


It's quiet.  You can't talk to your friend except in gestures, and that only if they're looking at you.  You can't get too excited, or swim too vigorously, or start laughing, or you won't be able to breathe enough.  It's hard to dive down even a few feet with a big air bubble around your face.


8.  What all the hype about Sandals is for.


We stayed at an all-inclusive resort for our honeymoon, but not Sandals, because it was too expensive.  Who cares about the Sandals brand name anyway? we thought.


Well.  Sandals is super expensive, but now we know why.  The service was unparalleled.  The food was five-star.  And I've never seen any place more beautiful.


9.  If you go to Sandals, you need to make all your reservations the first day.


All included?  Yes.  Guaranteed availability?  Negative.  Get those reservations in for dinner, snorkel tours, and whatever else you want.


10.   You have to sign your passport.


Entering a foreign country, jetlagged, at 9:00pm, and approaching a flinty-faced customs agent, praying for peaceable and swift entrance to their land, is not the ideal time to find out that that little line in your passport above the words "SIGNATURE OF BEARER" is supposed to have your signature on it.

11.  The best way to get Caleb to read his lesson is for me to walk away.


I learned this when I got so supremely frustrated with Caleb's lack of focus one day that I stood up and started to storm out of the room.  Before I could reach the door he had his nose buried in the book and was sounding out word after word in a panic.

12.  You can get a one-pump latte instead of the usual three pumps... and it's not bad with skim milk.


I heard about the pump thing in something I read about saving calories at Starbucks, but it actually solved the problem for me of the vanilla latte being too sweet, but a regular latte too bitter.  Plus, yeah, one pump with skim is like 140 fewer calories than a normal vanilla latte.

13.  It's "I bless the rains down in Africa," not "I miss the rains down in Africa."

I can't believe I've been singing it wrong for decades.



What have you learned this winter?