And Zen What

I'm one of those people who will do pretty much any ugly, messy, undesirable, tedious, soul-crushing job as long as I don't have to have a committee to do it with. When I became a "doesn't play well with others" type, I don't know. Probably came out of the box that way--as most of us do with respect to all kinds of things.

It's not that I have issues, exactly. It's more that I just like to get stuff done already, and with a minimum of mess. Show me a committee that can do either better than a single worker bee can.

So when I decide for some unknown reason to make, say, muffins on a weekend morning, I usually try to make Stealth Muffins, hiding what I am doing till the tray is safely popped into the oven and I can say to the inquiring child who narks me at that point, "Oh, sorry, honey, maybe next time--I'm all done with these."

I know, I know--there goes my Mother of the Year Award. Again. But despite the rosy aura surrounding those wonderful "parenting tip of the week" flyers that the school keeps spewing out, cooking with the kids isn't always all Little House on the Prairie around here. Actually it never is. And then, like I said, I'm a committee-phobe to begin with.

They got me this morning. I just wasn't sneaky enough. And they are cute as the dickens, my kids, with their sweet little pleading faces. What's a bossy Mom, MOM! to do?

"Mom, MOM! I PRRRROOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMISE I will do eZACKLY what you tell me dis time!!!! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZZZZZZZZZZ????"

That'd be Six. No doubt he's recalling the time I had to clean pancake batter off the counter, floor, and a innocent-bystander cat.

So yeah. They bickered, pushed and shoved, spilled all over, objected that everybody else got more batter, etc. etc. We all know that drill.

But they sure were happy.

And actually, me too. See, there really are things about making muffins that I do not enjoy (there goes my Betty Crocker Homemaker of the Year Award too--dang, this is a bad day for awards). And this morning I had the rare stroke of genius that makes cleaning muffin batter off an innocent-bystander dog worth it. (Hmm. Scratch that--when it comes to food, no dog is ever an innocent bystander.)

I don't like putting the cupcake liners in our gigantoid muffin tin (holds 24, I'm not kidding). So that became Five's job. (Also good for him tactilely, separating those dratted little paper things.)

I don't much like coaxing the batter off the spoon into the cupcake liners either. So I divided the number of muffins by the number of kids and had that done for me too.

And frozen berries--ugh. I hate frozen berries. Even looking at them makes my teeth hurt. But Four has very very particular Ideas about exactly what those berries need to be and where they should appear in the muffins. These Ideas are generally announced after the fact, as he's refusing to even touch the finished product on the grounds that abominations have been perpetrated as to berry choice and placement.

So--he became the Subcommittee of Berry Choice and Placement.

I could maybe get into this whole committee thing after all. . . .

I wonder if it works for vacuuming?