I Dream of Duggar

I really should be writing about the amazing weekend I had (it included a bike ride in the park, a museum, the DMV, and a couple of happy hours) but instead I feel like exposing you all to something I'm calling the Duggar Phenomenon. I vaguely remember once hearing about this southern family that had a lot of children...around 14 kids. But it was only a vague memory. Then, on Friday or Saturday, Erich and I caught a little 1 hour special on the Duggar family of Arkansas.
We watched it. I was mesmorized. Then, TLC ran another special about them last night (it actually kept me up late!) which revolved around the process of them building their 7000 sq. ft. house. I think I even dreamt about them last night! I have so many unanswered questions. Do they have a large extended family too? Do their cousins like them? Since they are home-schooled, do they get extracurricular interactions with other kids, or is it only through church group? Are these kids going to grow up normal? Cuz see, the odd thing is, they really appeared to be normal on TV - both in how they interacted with each other and the way they spoke on camera. Except for their matching outfits, the obscenely large collars that the girls' dresses had, and the fact that they have 14 siblings (I think its actually 15 now) they really seemed well-adjusted, intelligent, mature, etc. But I wanted nothing more than to judge them and critcize so much of their life. Are those kids going to grow up and want nothing to do with having babies? I spent a good chunk of my time today researching their philosophies, daily life routines, and trying to figure out which religion runs their life. I think it's most likely fundamentalist Southern Baptist, but I can't tell if "fundamentalist" is just a word that people who are not like them impose on such families. It doesn't sound like a label anyone would ever voluntarily have. They also follow a particular life principle known as "Full Quiver" after the passage in the Bible that recommends having as many children to fill a quiver (gross paraphrasing). I am hereby not responsible for the feeling you have after seeing the results from googling "full quiver" and "duggar" - or even just full quiver. I haven't even reached the tip of the iceberg yet on the questions I keep thinking of. They'll probably keep me up again tonight. I was hoping this entry would be a bit purging.

On an unrelated note, and STILL not getting to the point about the fabulous weekend, look what finally arrived at work today! It's my first kitchen scale. A friend of ours asked me tonight, "um, why? i mean, why did you order that?"
Haha. Ok, well see, a lot of the recipes I pick out give ingredients in mass measurements only. And because I never really took a lab science or cooked much with my mom, I can't guesstimate ANYTHING - 5 ounces? 200 grams? 1 lb, 3 ounces? No idea. I get by looking up rough conversions on the internet and saying things like, "well, it asks for 5 ounces of x liquid. And a regular glass of water is considered to be 8 ounces. So fill a little more than half of that glass with x liquid and you'll probably be at 5 ounces." And I KNOW that most of the cooking I do probably doesn't require the precise measurements that a kitchen scale will yield, but if I'm going to fuck up a recipe, I'd like it to be from my own ignorance, shortcuts, or risk-taking. Not because I can't achieve the portions the recipe calls for.

Here are a couple snippets of the wonderfully warm weekend: