Punished for Promptness: Part 2

I originally wrote on this last year and shared three instances where my timeliness backfired due to events outside of my control. There was one instance I forgot to include which I remembered later, so I'll share this story now.

When I was a freshman in college, I started taking classes toward my teaching certification my second semester. It was my very first teaching class with a student teaching component. Being the studious person I was, I checked my schedule early and wrote down room assignments so I'd be ready for the first day of classes.

My introduction to teaching class was my first class of the day. On my first day, I went to the building, sat outside the classroom, and waited. There was one other student waiting with me. We were nervously watching the clock. Class started. Nobody else was there. Five minutes passed. We started anxiously looking at each other. Then one of us (I remember it being me) looked online at the class schedule posting again only to find that the room listed was not the room we were sitting outside of. 

Frantically, we rushed to the other building and found the correct classroom where this class was being held. The two of us walked in about 10 minutes late and the professor glared at us. We meekly explained the situation, but I don't think she bought it. After all, 90% of the class made it on time, why didn't we? 

The correct answer to that is I believe we were the special 10% of our kind who had good intentions of being prompt, prepared, and ready. Unfortunately in this situation, it backfired. I do believe I was able to prove myself in the next two and a half years as I had this same professor again the year I graduated. She was one of a few teachers of the first class in sequence and she was the teacher who taught the third class. I was lucky enough to have her for both. We made teaching binders with all of our lesson plans, reflections, and teaching materials neatly catalogued. Each semester, I turned mine in early if not first. 

I've told my professor this story before. I don't remember what she said, but I don't think she remembered it happening. I don't blame her. There's a lot of kids to teach and two late ones for one class don't mean much. 

I still like being prompt. Even if it backfires.

Elephant and Piggie

I first discovered Elephant and Piggie at the library a few years ago when I would check out books. I purposely searched Chinese books at the library and would pick from what they had. One of the books we checked out was an Elephant and Piggie book. I didn't even realize it was an entire series until one of my student's parents saw the book and recognized it. At first I thought she had read it in her native language, but then she told me it was a popular children's book series. 

That's when I realized there was a whole series on Elephant and Piggie. This series can be slightly controversial because the "quality" of the books is debatable. Some people argue that they're not great books because the language is simple and there's no real point to the books. For an English book, I might agree. There are other books in English I'd rather my children read. So no, I would never buy the series in English. Library? Sure, why not. Buy? Nope.

I did enjoy the one we checked out. In English, it would have been Are You Ready to Play Outside? I enjoyed reading this book to my daughter in Chinese because I could actually read most of the characters. There were a few I had to look up, but overall, it wasn't bad. 

The first Elephant and Piggie book I discovered, in Chinese.

At the end of last year, I found an entire set of them in Chinese I could purchase for a reasonable price. I bought it, almost no questions asked. It shipped quickly, and I was so excited to open them after they arrived. My daughter loves reading them with me and I love being able to read most of the text. 

A few of the books in the series have words above my vocabulary so I started out reading them with my phone next to me to look up words I didn't recognize. Thankfully, I understand stroke order and the dictionary handwriting recognition is very smart so it's a pretty quick process. 

The "quality" of the books doesn't bother me because I don't believe it contains anything that is necessarily  bad. Sure, the grammar is simple and the book itself is pretty basic, but since it is in Chinese, I would be happy to read it to her knowing we would actually read it. I am not against having more quality Chinese books, but the problem is I cannot read half of it easily. If I can't read it easily, I'm less likely to pick it up and want to read it, and it is less likely to captivate my daughter. The few I do have, I've had to work really hard reading multiple times to become familiar with the text and recognize more of the difficult words. 

I will probably need to study up and learn new words as I read to my children in the future. Let's hope my kids have the patience to wait for me, too. 😅

Fancy Stickers

This past Christmas, I discovered something I wish had been invented 15 years ago: nail polish stickers! I had taken my daughter Christmas shopping and found them while browsing. I decided to buy one to try and really fell in love with them once I tried it. Why did I wish they'd been invented 15 years ago? They would have saved me a lot of headache and trouble as a teenager.

I'm a secret girly-girl at heart. As I've aged, I've acquired better style and taste, but sparkles, glitter, and all things shiny still have a place in my heart. When I was a junior in high school, I really wanted to try fake nails for homecoming. This was a big problem: I played piano. I'd been trained for the previous 12 years to cut my nails short and keep them short. The most I'd ever done was paint them with normal nail polish and no fancy designs, but my right hand always looked worse than my left, and it would chip, scratch, and look unkempt within 24 hours. 

Junior year. I told my piano teacher I wanted to try fake nails for homecoming and he glared at me and asked me why. I didn't really have a great answer...besides, "I just want them." He told me they had to come off by the next week. Great, I thought. I'll finally get the fake nails I always wanted. 

Of course, I wasn't going to pay money to go to a salon and get them done knowing they'd have to come off in a week. Instead, I went to the store, bought a pack of DIY ones, sat on my bathroom floor, and got to work. 

These nails are no joke to put on. The glue was like super glue, and these fake nails really added a layer of stuff to the top of your nails. I got them on, and marveled them, and liked the way they looked. Except I overlooked one crucial detail. After having short nails for nearly my entire life, I couldn't stand the way these felt on my fingers. They'd only been on for about 30 minutes when I couldn't take it anymore and wanted them removed.

If I had fully read the instructions before I started gluing them, I may not have gone through with it completely. These things didn't just pry off the tops of your fingers. You needed nail polish remover to soak them off. My inexperienced teenage self felt horror flow through my body as I realized the amount of nail polish remover I had left in the bottle: not nearly as much as I needed.

I don't remember how long it was, but that night, I painstakingly removed the nails by soaking them ever so carefully in the cap of the nail polish bottle. Somehow, I removed all 10 with about 2-3 capfuls of nail polish remover. I never ended up going to homecoming with beautifully done nails. 

15 years later, I discovered the wonders of nail polish stickers. They were really easy to apply.

Fancy stickers.

I'm typically not big on doing my nails or paying to have them done because I'm so rough on my hands, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well the stickers held on. Yes, I can feel them on my nail, but they feel like a thick layer of nail polish, not an extra layer of "stuff" sitting on top of your nail. As you can see from the picture, I still keep my nails trimmed short. They'll never be Instagram-worthy nails, but I also didn't pay over $10 for them. 

I ended up keeping them on for 17 days! They would have lasted longer except my nail started to grow out so having the gap at the back of my nail started to look funny. 

Day 17. One fell off but that one
potentially had a user error when I put it on.

Jamberry was the first company to come out with nail wraps and it wasn't until after 2010 when nail stickers actually started hitting the markets. This was still a few years before that, so unfortunately, I wouldn't have any other options. I never told my teacher about what really happened, but it wouldn't have mattered to him. I went back the week after for a lesson and the fake nails were gone.

He would never have been able to say anything about fancy stickers. Oh well.

Unintentional "Excitement"

I took my children to the grocery store one morning last week on a normal grocery run. We went inside, we got groceries, I remembered to grab everything on the list and use my coupons, and everything was going great. We came out and I loaded up the groceries in the trunk first. Then, I took my children with me to return the cart and carried them back to the car (yes, me, carrying two children totaling nearly half my own weight) because it was 32 degrees outside and windy. 

Once we got back to the car I decided to put my son in his car seat first because my daughter can stand by the car, not wander around, and follow directions. So I proceeded to strap my son into his car seat. I was holding my car keys in my hand while getting him in, and he wanted to play with the keys. I thought, "Why not? He plays with them at home. It'll keep him from trying to squirm out of the car seat as I strap him in."

I got him into the car seat and closed his door. As I was walking my daughter to the other side of the car to get her into the car, I heard the doors lock. My son was still holding the car keys in his hands and had pressed the lock button on the key fob. Oh. Dear. 

It was near freezing outside, my daughter and I were not in the car, and the car was now locked. I went back over to the other side of the car and started telling my son to press the second button to UNlock the doors. Now, reminder, my son is 21 months old. He's not saying very much, and I think he understands what we say, but honestly, I don't know for sure. All I knew was that I was in big trouble. The windows were also rolled up, so I don't even know how clearly he could hear me. 

I grabbed my phone, which thankfully I still had because my purse was still with me, and called my husband. He actually picked up, which I wasn't expecting him to do, and I relayed to him the nightmare that was unfolding in front of me. 

Amazingly, before I had gotten to the point about needing to ask my husband to pause his work to come bring the spare key so he could unlock my car for me, I heard the car door unlock! My son had pushed the right button! I quickly ran to the driver's side of my car because that's the only door which unlocks when you press the button once and opened it. I intentionally left it open so the buttons would have no effect on the key fob. I hung up the phone, put my daughter into the car, and drove home. 

Isn't he super cute despite having 75% of his face covered? 😍
He's probably smirking at me behind that mask.

Who knew a 45 minute round-trip to the grocery store could entail such excitement? Mothers. Experienced mothers know. 

I will probably still give my son the keys to play with when I'm in a pinch. But I WILL remember to take them back before I close his side of the door. Eternally grateful that he either 

a. understood my Chinese through the car door

b. got curious enough and moved his finger to the 'unlock' button and pressed it

c. had some divine intervention somewhere

💙 He's still my most precious baby.

Small Kitchen Appliances

Happy New Year! 

Sometime in the middle of last year, a thought hit me. I wondered how many times I actually used my small kitchen appliances. Honestly, they take up a lot of space in my kitchen. And they're not cheap. So why do I take the money and space to buy and store them? That's what I wanted to find out.

How do I define what a small kitchen appliance is? It's something specialized I use in the kitchen to prepare or cook food or drink. I own a lot. 19 to be exact. Most of them are electric and require plugs. I’ve added a few which don't for the purpose of my experiment. Here's the list of all of our small kitchen appliances:

1. Instant Pot
2. Instant Pot Air Fryer
3. Stand Mixer
4. Griddle
5. Juicer
6. Waffle Maker
7. Popcorn Maker
8. Crockpot/Slow Cooker
9. Mini Food Warmer
10. Food Processor
11. Blender
12. Vacuum Sealer
13. Hand Mixer
14. Immersion Blender
15. Toaster Oven
16. Kettle
17. Rice Cooker
18. Steamer
19. Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Microwave is not listed because our microwave is built into our kitchen. I know not all houses or apartments come with built-in microwaves, but for my situation, it is not being included in this survey.

The first 17 are all plug ins. The last two are not. Three are bolded because I am positive we will be using those daily or close to. Those are must-haves in our house. 

When we got married, we only had about 9-10 on the list (mostly wedding registry gifts!). The other half of them we've slowly amassed over the years of cooking adventures and life. I'd justify owning them all, but they take up a lot of space. This year will tell me what's really worth owning and what isn't worth the storage space.

Remind me to tell you the story about how I snagged our waffle maker for less than $0.11. Yup, that's right. Eleven cents! It's even a Cuisinart one!

We've used our waffle maker numerous times for it to be worthwhile, but
I wonder how many times I will use it this year...

Do you own any small kitchen appliances that aren't on my list? Let me know if you do! 

Which one do you think I will end up using the most? (Besides my three non-negotiables)