It’s a two-fer! One: Seven Quick Takes, hosted by the hostest with the mostest Post-its (get it? In the picture. What?), Jen Fulwiler of Conversion Diary (and, among other things, the Register blog).
Oh, so that’s one. Two is that I am crapping things up at the Register today with a little Lenten Quiz: JUST HOW HOLY ARE YOU? Come find out! And see how long it takes before someone notices, and becomes offended that, there is no such person as the Venerable Scrupe!
So go see that, and I want to make sure I get a harumph out of all of you. Then come back here and join me for:
SEVEN QUICK TAKES: Seven things I could resist, actually
1. Making wontons from scratch. This is only a victory in that it shows that I have infinite capacity for feeling guilty (every time I open the freezer and the package of wonton wrappers falls out, and I have to tell them gently, “Not yet, not yet.”) over something that is entirely morally neutral. Oh, does not making wontons make me feel guilty! But that thing I said about that lady at Mass — well, I got over that pretty quick.
2. Eating grapes impregnated with Nerds. Although my five-year-old daughter is pushing me really, really hard. It’s kind of like voting for Mitt Romney: you don’t really have to try it, to imagine how awful it would be.
3. Yelling, “YOU FORGOT YOUR PANTS!” at passing college girls. You know the ones — sashaying along the sidewalk with their jaunty side ponytails (so boot-cut jeans, which flatter my hips, are out of style, but side ponytails had to make a comeback, eh? Eh???), their North Face jackets, their Uggs, and their . . . not-pants. What are they called, riggings? Bleggings? Oh yeah, they’re called TIGHTS. Not pants, girls. Go back to your dorm and finish getting dressed.
4. Getting [#4 has been edited, in keeping with the spirit of Lent] knocked up, for almost two years straight!
5. Sending a follow-up email to the director of my children’s school, when it turned out she needed to use our bathroom. I had rashly decided, you see, that no one would need to use the bathroom before we all went sledding together, and so I did not clean it, even though its degree of filth had long ago reached and overtaken the squalid stage. This wasn’t a messy bathroom, or even a dirty bathroom. I wouldn’t even call it filthy. This was . . . a third world bathroom. This was a Drudge headline bathroom. This was a Lollapalooza level of revolting muck and outrageous stench, a putrid, feculent, blight on the face of all that is good and decent. But I didn’t say a word! Because what can you say? “Well, now you know?”
Oh, so the email I resisted sending was going to start, “Thanks for coming sledding with us! I wanted to reassure you about all the discarded medical gloves on the floor. . . ”
6. Putting windshield washer fluid in the car all winter. Is it safe to drive around with brown, opaque windshield? No. Is it the action of an adult to seek out the deepest puddles and barrel through them at top speed, in the hopes that the splash will clear my view a bit? No. Is it so hard to open up a bottle of windshield washer fluid and dump it in? No. Is it likely I will just keep putting it off anyway? Extremely.
7. Sitting down to find appropriate pictures for these quick takes, even though the right picture makes all the difference. Well, here’s something I couldn’t resist:
