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I would like to start this post with a couple admissions.

My kids have taught me most of what I learned in July, with the exception of #1. Dinner time conversations are quickly becoming my favorite time of the day. We gather to eat and my teenagers slowly squeeze out all the random facts they’ve absorbed over the course of one day.

This list is only from the first 15 days of month, before we left on our vacation. And I had to narrow it down people.

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So here you have it, the twelve things I learned in July, in no particular order:

1) If your husband is teetering on the fence about crawling out of bed to go to the beach with you, put on your bikini and walk around in the room looking for your shoes. He’ll drive you there in twenty minutes. At least that’s what I hear. *wink*

2) If you wash and dry clothes with a pack of gum in your pants (hypothetically speaking) wet a fabric softener sheet to wipe away gum evidence off the barrel of the washer and dryer. Don’t you wonder what is in those gauzy sheets of paper?

3) An artist date, doing something fun out of your routine by yourself, does indeed inspire creativity. You might make a new friend at the art gallery you decide to visit and forget the fresh flowers you just bought are laying in the passenger’s seat baking in the sun.

4) Consigning your clothes, after you spend hours cleaning out all your closets, turns out to be a good return on your investment. Either people like your taste or they don’t know any better.

5) When making dinner, don’t scurry to answer the phone. You’ll drop your new Droid S4 for a Verizon sales call and crack your brand spankin’ new screen. And find out it costs $350 to replace it.

6) Tape fixes a lot of things and saves you money.

7) According to all the smart people who responded to my Facebook question, a bowl of cider vinegar on the counter tricks fruit flies into swimming to their death. Cover with cellophane and poke with small holes.

8) Start a sentence at dinner like this: “You know, it would would really be awesome if . . .,” and then pause. Your family just might fill in the blank with phrases you didn’t expect like: we won the lottery, bought a new cottage or penthouse suite, or we drove a G wagon or a Gumpert Apollo (they had to Google that one for me . . . and spell it).  You’ll realize what you were going to say doesn’t really matter anymore because you learned your kids are smart dreamers.

9) Did you know that drawing pictures of junk food when you are on a diet actually alters your mood and diminishes cravings more than let’s say, drawing vegetables? Here’s the article my doctor told me about during my routine visit. We talked about Sabbath too, but that’s #12.

10) What do Graceland and Les Miserable have in common? Aaron Tveit. Surprised? I’m pretty good at recognizing people but I was clueless about this one.

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11) The oldest breed of dog in the world is  . . . . drumroll . . . . the Canaan Dog, dating back to biblical times.

12)When you read a friend’s book, it may inspire you enough to start something that impacts more than just your closest friends and you’ll become known as the Sabbath lady. And then said author will guest post on your blog in July and it’ll be epic.

 

I’m joining Emily Freeman at Chatting at the Sky to take note of what I learn every month, posting on the last Friday. It makes me realize how much we learn in a short time. If we’re paying attention.