I spent untold hours yesterday installing, removing, tweaking, downloading, and almost (but not quite) cursing. (Okay. Maybe one little “dammit!”)

The computer is running so far this morning, but it did give me the old “your computer has recovered from a serious issue,” as if that’s news to me.

I’m sorry my map doesn’t recognize Tokyo as a “valid” city. I’ll email the guys who created it–it’s still in the Beta stage, so maybe they haven’t gotten to that hemisphere yet. Or something.

For those who are curious, I already run AVG anti-virus software, as well as X-Cleaner, Zone Alarm, SpyBot and SpySweeper. And I never click on suspicious things. But despite my precautions, something’s happened. When I used the “Restore CD,” my Windows XP reverted to the older version. I am unable to install the newest updates (including the Service Pack 2)–the computer shuts down midway during the installation.

We do have another computer. The boys have a computer, which is identical to mine, only with sticky keys and an unfortunate location (their room). It shows no signs of illness.

My company arrives late tomorrow night, so today I am thinking about deep cleaning the bathrooms. And mopping the boys’ room. I don’t want to do too much too far in advance or daily living with children will undo it.

On a positive note, this is the first time I’ve ever had computer trouble. On a negative note, if my dad were here, he could fix this in a jiffy, but alas, he took his computer knowledge to his early grave.

Stupid computer. As of 3:17 p.m., it is randomly shutting down. I wiped the hard drive clean (again), reinstalled everything (again) . . . and still, the computer shuts down.

A virus? Perhaps.

If so, I hope the originator ends up in hell Chuck E. Cheese’s.

I know. I wasn’t even gone long enough for you to miss me. I have apparently cured my computer woes. Next up? A cure for cancer.

Actually, I’m going to watch television in a minute or two. Surely I’ll be able to find a reality show somewhere. I am at the mercy of the television programmers since I don’t have TiVo yet, like the cool kids do.

Tonight, I caught a glimpse of someone I wished to avoid in the grocery store. Someone I know, but not well. So, I traveled a tangled path through the store, swerving this way and that, peeking around corners before committing my cart to an aisle. I strolled ever so slowly to the checkstand, noting that the woman I wanted to avoid was already in the next line, about to pay.

I tilted away from the woman as I unloaded my cart and pretended to study the tabloids. I would have whistled an aimless tune, if only I knew how. I practiced the “If I don’t look at you, I am invisible,” method.

Then, she spotted me as she walked past the checkstands. “MEL!” She yelled my name and so I feigned great joy at seeing her. She gave me a message for my mother, asked me how I am (“busy,” I said, my standard answer which tells everything, and yet nothing at all).

That’s why it took me so long to get home from the store tonight.

Oh, and to answer a question or two. Ellipsis asked if the coffee really is better here in the Pacific Northwest, home to Starbucks. To my chagrin, I hate coffee. I thought I would drink it when I grew up, but alas, no. I adore the smell of coffee and despise the taste. I avoid steaming drinks entirely, anyway, as they make my nose run.

But I do like my chocolate with nuts. Unfortunately, I was so busy avoiding that woman at the store that I forgot to buy any.

Also, if I could choose a Superpower, I think I’d have to go with the Power of Invisibility. Wouldn’t that be handy?

My computer continues to malfunction. All paths lead to wiping the hard drive clean and using the magic “Restore CD,” to start fresh.

I am looking forward to this almost as much as I am looking forward to starting another school week with my underachieving twin boys who exert more energy avoiding schoolwork than they do working.

And I’m looking forward to that almost as much as I’m looking forward to preparing my house for overnight company arriving on Thursday and staying for the weekend.

If you never hear from me again, you’ll know I was done in–defeated, decimated, destroyed–by either my computer and its Blue Screen of Death, schooling-at-home uncooperative twins who just can’t remember to capitalize proper nouns or put numbers in their proper columns during long division or my house, host to millions and billions of microorganisms, thousands of sheets of errant paper, hundreds of toys, dozens of glasses stranded in bedrooms and four kids who make messes quicker than I can clean.

Or maybe I just ran off.

Send chocolate.

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.