The task seemed straightforward. Create a water filtration device. Just follow the simple directions listed in the student guide. Materials needed? A 2-liter bottle and activated charcoal. (After spending three weeks thinking about buying activated charcoal, another week half-heartedly searching for activated charcoal at Target and the grocery store, and a Saturday morning actually buying activated charcoal at the pet store, we were finally ready.) The curriculum company provided the two kinds of sand and two kinds of gravel we needed. I had to scrounge up a cotton ball.

I will spare you the details, but let’s just say that when the directions say to loosely plug the opening of the bottle with a cotton ball, do not take them literally or seriously. And by “them,” I mean the sadists at the curriculum company who wrote the directions to the science project.

Because if you follow the scant directions, you will end up with pea gravel in your kitchen garbage disposal and as you fish out each piece of gravel from the bowels of the garbage disposal, you might also go berserk and yell, “I HATE SCIENCE PROJECTS!” in a very unmotherlike manner. (I’m guessing Michelle Duggar has never thrown a tantrum with her hand plunged into the dark recesses of her garbage disposal.)

The children did manage to learn the five steps of water filtration (aeration, coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, disinfection), despite my antics.

And by the way, when the directions say “one 2-liter bottle,” just realize that they actually mean “four 2-liter bottles.” One, four, what’s the diff, really?

I hate science projects. Just tell me and I will believe you. I don’t need to recreate a water filtration system to believe that it works. I am entirely convinced by the written word. No hands-on experiments needed.

Note to self: Avoid becoming a scientist when you grow up.

Cotton ball, schmotton ball. Did I mention how much I hate science projects?

Check out Toni’s blog. Her stat counter tells her she’s had 2900 visitors so far. She wonders when she’ll reach 3000. How about tonight? Run on over and tell her hello, won’t you?

What kills me about Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar is not the fact that they have sixteen children all named with J names. Even Michelle’s extreme-mullet hair doesn’t bother me (too much) and Jim Bob can’t really help that his name is Jim Bob, right?

I just can’t get over the fact that she can appear on television a day or two after giving birth to her sixteenth baby while looking so incredibly chipper and awake. And her children, even the seven little in-a-row boys all sit quietly and literally smile when the camera pans by them.

She’s a better woman than I. Put me in a line-up with her, ask someone to identify the superior mother and they’d pick her. No question.

If a camera panned my home, they’d see the dinner plates sticky with pancake syrup from last night’s makeshift dinner. (My husband wasn’t home for dinner again.) They’d see “Higgley-Town Heroes” on television and in the same room, a portable DVD player playing “Veggietales.” My daughter is tossing Goldfish crackers to my son. School-at-home paperwork litters my desk. My Reluctant Student sits bleary-eyed at the kitchen table a full hour before he normally stumbles from his room. He’s desperate to have at least part of the day off. (It’s a Teacher In-Service day and my 7-year old has the day off.) Occasionally, he shouts out complaints that I’ve ruined his life by giving him too much work.

The “Quiverfull” folks add children to their families routinely, tallying up another mark of blessing from God. The problem I have with the whole “children are a blessing from God” party-line is the unspoken corollary, which is “those who do not have children have not been blessed by God.” (And then there is the woman who calls herself “The Comic Mom,” who doesn’t think adoptions should be done. Ever.)

Believe me, in the days when I was trying to get pregnant without success, I did feel like God had turned His omnipotent back on me. My friends were conceiving while using birth control. I was like a fertility talisman–everyone in my sphere of influence became pregnant. Except me. I spent more days than I care to remember carefully wiping mascara from under my eyes, trying to look like I was not crying, when, in fact, I couldn’t stop crying. All this angst because I was not a mother.

The question is, did God make me infertile becuase He loves me less? Or does He loves me less because I’ve only been pregnant twice? Are the arrival of babies the surest sign of God’s blessing? Because that’s the message I get from women like Michelle Duggar who blithely portray a perfect family crammed with smiling children who never appear on camera with so much as a runny-nose, let alone a foot-stomping fit. She runs a tight ship. No question about that.

But I am not inspired to do the same. In fact, I feel the tiniest bit enraged at this woman who seems to be living a life which she planned exactly, down to the matching pinafores on her daughters and the straight parts in her sons’ hair. I mean, doesn’t she ever wake up and think, Today I am too tired to be a mother. Does she ever do the math in her head to figure out when the last kid will be gone? Does she have any flaws (beyond that misguided hairstyle)? And how does she get those kids to sit still? Don’t things ever happen in her family that cause her to shriek and say things she regrets like, “YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY!”?

Kudos to Michelle and Jim Bob and their ever-expanding family rosy-cheeked children. I just wish they’d stop appearing on television looking as if they never break a sweat. Are their superior reproductive systems a sign of God’s ultimate blessing? And if so, what did I do to forfeit a similar blessing? Or is it simply a matter of biology, nothing more?

And is shutting down the reproductive factory the same as telling God, “No thank you. No more blessings for me,” as Jim Bob and Michelle would have us believe?

[Update: I did see the entire family appearing on a night-time news program and this time, the baby was screaming and the little boys were fidgeting and that made me feel OH SO MUCH BETTER about my inadequate mothering. Thank you, Michelle.]

This morning on ABC’s “Good Morning, America,” I caught a profile of a young doctor named Brian Skotko. He did a research study about the way that doctors inform parents that their baby has Down Syndrome. From the article linked:

“Doctors continue to find it very challenging to deliver a diagnosis like Down syndrome to an otherwise happy expectant mom,” says Skotko, who has a 24-year-old sister with Down syndrome and co-authored the award-winning book “Common Threads: Celebrating Life With Down Syndrome” (Band of Angels Press). “But the results of this study are conclusive: Delivering a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome does not have to be a gloomy affair. In fact, mothers in this study have now written the prescription on how best to explain the diagnosis in a loving manner.”

Ever since “meeting” Julana of Life in the Slow Lane and Barbara of Mommy Life I have been more aware of the challenges and blessings of families who have children with Down Syndrome.

And as Brian Skotko points out, doctors ought to make parents more aware of the blessings as well as the challenges, too.

A couple of Sundays ago, I was wandering the church with my 3-year old daughter who believes she is too good for the nursery. The other toddlers and babies and preschoolers happily play in the nursery while their parents sit in church, but not Miss Hoity-Toity. Oh no. This is payback for the many judgmental thoughts I had as a teenage nursery attendant. I would roll my eyes at mothers who wouldn’t let their little ones cry a little or a lot when they were abandoned in the nursery.

Well, now I’m that mother. I’ve left her a time or two in the nursery, but when I’ve returned, she was gasping for breath and extra-clingy for the next day or two. She has a genuinely slow-to-warm-up personality and I can’t see any reason to leave her in the nursery. So, I do my spiritual worship while I trail behind her and try to convince her to be still, just for a while, just until the congregational singing ends at least.

So, there we were, hanging out in the fellowship hall looking at a large display of pictures and memorabilia that had been set up for a funeral the day before. I studied the pictures and artifacts of this man’s life, calculated how old he was when he died, figured out how old he was when he was married. Then, my eyes fell upon a plain brown plastic box labeled with the man’s name. The box held his cremated remains.

How odd it is to have your life summed up on a long table full of pictures and items. How strange to be condensed small enough to fit into an unremarkable box. Eighty-two years and now he’s gone.

Tonight, my husband has gone to Seattle to visit a dying woman. The last time I saw her, she looked fantastic. A couple of years ago, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, but she’d responded very well to treatment. But the end is near now. She will slip from being a member of our world to being a memory.

Sometimes, I can hardly stand the thought that our time here is short. The world looms large and I have only seen a tiny speck of it. I’ve sunk my feet into the sand at Cannon Beach only a dozen times a most. I watched the sun set in Tahiti only ten nights. I breathed the brilliant air at Mt. Rainier a mere half a dozen times. I’ve never seen the Northern Lights or the Alaskan coastline. I haven’t eaten lobster in Maine, nor have I gazed at the Grand Canyon.

So many books wait to be read and that doesn’t count the brilliant prose yet to be written. My shelves alone could keep me busy for months, if not years. I haven’t read Dickens or Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” I never developed an appreciation for poetry.

I haven’t seen a live production of “The Nutcracker” at Christmas. I’ve never been to Hawaii. I’ve never even seen Niagara Falls.

My children’s journeys have scarcely begun. I want to see the directions they take. I want to be waiting at the dock when their ships come in. I want to cheer at the the finish line. I want to hold grandbabies and prove that mothers-in-law can also be friends.

I think of the really beautifully written books I’ve read. When I read a great book, I am eager to know what happens and simultaneous dread the book’s end. That’s a shadow of how I feel when I ponder the story of my life stretching ahead. I look forward to the unfolding tale, but I shirk from the end. The thought of closing the book feels like a boulder on my chest and I can’t breathe. So mostly, I don’t think about it. Until I see a brown plastic box holding what used to be over six feet of man.

Occasionally, I think I should just go ahead and save my husband the trouble by writing my obituary now. But then I realize how incomplete it would be . . . at least I hope that it would be incomplete. I have more life to live, more stories to tell, more boxes to check. I need more material before my obituary will be worth the money the newspaper will charge to run it.

Plus, I need a better picture.

At 4:00 p.m., I wiggled a stack of recipe cards from the box I’ve had since I was a teen. I decided to make Taco Soup and . . . muffins. Yes, those “Corny Corn Muffins” I like so well from my favorite cookbook, Jane Brody’s Good Food Book.

There on page 600. I turn the oven on to preheat to 425 degrees. First ingredient, wheat flour. I have that! I measure out a cup. I feel smug about making homemade muffins for dinner. Next ingredient, corn meal. I reach the top shelf and pull down my box. I wonder how long it’s been up there, so I sniff. Rancid. Blech. I sniff again, just in case. Still rancid.

I throw the box away. Hmmm, what could I use instead? I know! Oatmeal, that steel-cut stuff I got from Trader Joe’s. Yes, that will give a similar texture, I think. I measure out a cup. Then I add baking powder, salt and sugar.

Next ingredient, 2 eggs. I get them out, along with the . . . oops. No milk. Well. What can I use as a substitute? I stand and stare, willing milk to appear. I finally decide to use sour cream, so I plop half a cup into the measuring cup and add water until it reaches the one cup mark. I melt three tablespoons of butter.

Last ingredient? Corn. Please, please, please, I think, let there be corn. I don’t have the creamed corn the recipe calls for (who buys that stuff?), but I have one can of regular corn. I measure out a cup.

I mix everything together–just until moistened, as directed and scoop the muffin tin full.

My daughter ate a bite and said, “Ewww. I don’t like it.” She ate Cheerios for dinner. My 7-year old took a bite and said, “Uh. I don’t want it.” My blue-eyed boy gave me a sympathy vote and said, “They’re good with butter.” My other son made himself macaroni and cheese.

I thought they were good, but then again, I never met a muffin I didn’t like. Next time, maybe I’ll check to see if I have the main ingredients before I start cooking. Or not. It’s so much more challenging to cook without the stuff you need.

I am reminded of my stepmother’s cooking. She once made us peanut-butter-tuna-fish sandwiches, but we didn’t have to eat them because she burned them while broiling them. And I also remember the cake she made for my sister’s birthday cake one year. She burned the chocolate while making frosting, so the cake had a frosting top, but naked sides.

I consider myself a good cook under normal circumstances and I enjoy cooking. But I do not enjoy cooking while being interrupted. I do not enjoy noise while I cook. I do not enjoy the limitations of my family’s eating habits. My husband grew up in Houston, drinking Coca-Cola for breakfast and eating delicacies like Frito-Pie and brisket sandwiches. He doesn’t really care for vegetables, pasta, anything involving eggs–unless they are fried–muffins, vegetarian cuisine, pork, salads . . . and he’s lactose intolerant, so dairy products are problematic. He also prefers that I avoid red meat as it hurts his stomach. He doesn’t like cornbread, biscuits, muffins or scones.

My children have their own quirks. One isn’t fond of meat. One hates potatoes. None of them like their food mixed together (aka casseroles).

I like to cook, but I like an appreciative audience. My sons tend to ask, “What’s for dinner?” and then respond, “Ewwww.” I know. I should have nipped that in the bud, but I haven’t, so I generally respond, “Monkey guts and pig eyeballs. With a side of elephant tails and bat eyelashes.”

And now, in closing, I’d like to explain what I believed a “taco” was when I was growing up. My mother hailed from North Dakota, the daughter of a Swede who taught me to eat pickled herring and pickled pigs’ feet. (Yum.) My father’s people came from the Netherlands and landed in Wisconsin. We’re pale folks from the North.

So, my mother’s version of a taco was this. Take one soft corn tortilla. Microwave it until it’s floppy. Fill with fried hamburger which you have lovingly seasoned with salt. Sprinkle with cheese, shredded lettuce, diced dill pickles and then cover the whole mess with ketchup. If you are extremely adventurous, squirt one drop of Tabasco sauce in the center. Fold and eat.

My husband grimaces everytime I mention this, which means I bring it up once a year at least.

I’ve been a daughter for forty years.
I’ve been an older sister for thirty-nine years.
I’ve been a wife for eighteen years.
I’ve been a mother of boys for twelve years.
I’ve been living in this house for seven years.
I’ve the mother of a girl for three years.
I’ve been a blogger for two years.

I babysat.
I worked on a goat farm.
I picked and planted strawberries (my first “real job” when I was twelve.)
I worked at the “Nutt Hutt,” a natural food store.
I folded soft tacos and fried mexi-fries at Taco Time.
I typed college papers for money.
I worked in the cafeteria.
I was a nanny.
I worked for Heritage USA as a children’s ministries worker and then as a youth ministries intern.
I was a childcare worker at a health club.
I worked as a legal secretary.
I was the office manager/secretary for a social service organization that served widowed people.
I worked for Blue Cross in the customer service department.
I had a home daycare.
I transcribed legal documents.
I have been paid to write a time or two.

But I have no idea what I’m going to make for dinner, even though I assured myself at the grocery store on Saturday that I had a plan for each day this week. It’s 4:00 p.m. Do you know where what your dinner is?

I was about to conclude a long rambling post when my computer shut off again. Same time as last night.

The only thing I can salvage is this thought: I think Oprah is chubbier this season.

Oh. And this thought about the sixteen year old princesses featured on that MTV show “Sweet Sixteen,” a show which features the birthday parties for these spoiled brats. These girls need to be grabbed by the hair and forced to serve the less fortunate. They could serve meals to homeless people or read books to smelly, unruly, underprivileged children. I watched two episodes tonight while I put away laundry and ironed. I couldn’t look away from their complete self-absorption.

That’s all for tonight, lest more of my words disappear in a computer crash.

Tomorrow:
What I said to the lab tech when he asked what I do.
Why I hate cooking for my family.
Rain and weeds.
Songs I sang in the 70s and 80s.
(All ground I covered tonight in the post I lost.)

Last night, my computer began to spontaneously turn itself off. Over and over again. I was prepared for it to spontaneously combust, but it did not.

[This morning, my recalcitrant machine informed me, “The error was likely caused by an unrecoverable system hardware error. These errors are general in nature and can be caused by problems (such as overheating) with one or more of the following computer components:

Random Access Memory (RAM)
System board
Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Power Supply

I doubt it. It’s probably just the avian flu and fifteen million of us will die by nightfall.]

Then, after retiring to bed at 11:30 p.m., I watched Ebert & Roeper and finally snapped off the light at midnight. I was mysteriously wide awake (worried about my dreadfully ill computer, sure) and nine minutes later, my 3-year old daughter who never wakes in the night, woke up crying.

Let’s just say it was a long night, featuring a whimpering child coughing in my face and hogging my bed. I gave her ibuprofen at 2:00 a.m. and then we slept until 7:00 a.m. She’s been talkative and cheerful all day. Me? Not so much.

We went to a wedding tonight. I sat in almost the back row, while my husband stood on the platform and conducted the ceremony. I am happy to report that everyone wore shoes.

My mother babysat and although my daughter was thrilled at the idea of Grandma coming to our house, she cried four times in the first hour we were gone. She didn’t nap well earlier today (if at all) and she has a little cold–my daughter, not my mother. I’m not sure who was happier to see me at 8:30 p.m. . . my mom or my little girl.

I saw a woman at the wedding wearing a poncho, much like that one Martha Stewart famously wore when she was released from prison. As far as I can tell, this is an ugly yarn blanket with a hole in it for the head. I can’t believe people are wearing these atrocities. When I was in third or fourth grade, my grandma crocheted me more than one shawl, which I wore to church with my cotton-polyester blend dresses and my white knit kneesocks. If you wore a blanket-like creation in your childhood, you should not wear it again. That’s why you will not find me wrapped up in a poncho or a shawl. Well, that and the ugly factor.

Also, what is the deal with wedding clothes? Not just the clothes the wedding party wears (halter necked gowns which bare shoulders should not be worn by just anyone, you know, especially, say, seven of your closest friends of all body types and sizes), but the clothes which are acceptable to wear to a wedding. I feel like I’m about eight hundred years old, but when did it become okay for women to wear pants to weddings? I wore a dress and pantyhose to the last wedding I attended, and as you may recall (if you have been lucky enough to follow all my utterly boring fascinating adventures, I stripped those pantyhose off in the bathroom at the reception. (Which sounds very exciting, except, I was alone and it was a matter of comfort versus agony.) I noticed then that many of the other women wore pants. Who is responsible for this fashion trend?

I don’t know, but I’d like to thank the woman responsible for my complete and utter comfort tonight. My black pants were quite comfortable and as it turns out, completely commonplace despite the fancy, hoity-toitiness of the wedding. I sipped champagne during the toast, I held a skewered strawberry, banana chunk and marshmallow under a fountain of chocolate and I asked the (retired) military wife next to me if they had children when they were stationed in St. Louis and she replied–to my utter shock–“We don’t have children.” (I’ve known this lovely couple for about five years.)

Someone, please, anyone, stop me from making small talk.