I, too, have no muffin wisdom to impart.

Kat, I am *thoroughly* jealous of Noah, as the parent of a 6-year-old who's... not there yet is putting it mildly. A couple of months ago Matilda set herself the task of writing out all the numbers from 1 to 1000; she's currently at 220 because once she got up to 3 digits it all just got lost, and she can see no reason at all why any number follows any other number, ever. I know she's a smart kid and a good pattern-recognizer, but in her mind numbers are just this big giant blank without rules, rhyme or reason.

eta: And the end result of the struggle is that *I* feel incredibly stupid, like her mathless brain is my fault or I'm clearly the worst teacher in the history of ever, because if she doesn't get the concept it's all on me.

It's not all on you, JZ. Grace is lost on math and patterns and the rest...something just clicked for Noah. With Grace, I sometimes wonder if it's just willful uncaring on her part. Like we had to draw out AB patterns with Grace and she screwed it up. But I wonder if she screwed it up on purpose.

Ah. ER is two doses down the right way. A third would be safest, but I'm not going to push it. This has been effortless so far, except for the bit with the raging drug addict in the bed next to me. Or maybe I mean raving. Either way, loud, but I can hear there is a louder guy on the other side of the floor.

This guy is loudly proclaiming the massive amounts of mixed drugs he's just taken, as well as the STD test he needs because of the amazing skankitude of the woman he just slept with. The guy across the section is whooping without consonants.

I thought I was done working for the day (riding the data centre guys

Ah. ER is two doses down the right way. A third would be safest, but I'm not going to push it. This has been effortless so far,

Fuck yeah! For a change.

Aw, Matilda, I had to that task at the end of second grade (so two years older, I think) and it totally loomed over me as this impossible thing, but then I was able to do it. And then I turned out to be quite mathy later on.

I also remember watching my grandmother cross stitch, and she's put in a couple of stitches and ask me where the next one would go and I would have NO IDEA, it was a complete mystery. I can't reconstruct how not to see such a simple pattern now. Brain development is a wacky thing to experience as it happens to your own brain.

Sorry for the loud, ita, hooray for real treatment!

I was thinking, do you whisk up the wet and dry ingredients separately before gently combining them? If not, that might help. For some reason.

Eta: CI suggests equal parts butter and oil for tender crumb.

Halfway through last night's SNL. Jeremy Renner continues to be the sexiest, a bit surprising for SNL.

ita Glad the ER visit is going smoother with the medicine.

I suck at pattern recognition. Mom says that when they were doing some testing they did the test with the blocks that are half red and half white - they show a picture with a design, make it with the blocks then mess it up and you have to complete it.

I couldn't do it. I never finished a single one. Mom said the tester got extremely worried until they got to the story telling part of the test. They give you a set of pictures of people doing something , you put them in the proper order so they tell a story. I didn't get them in the correct order, but I told a really good story to go along with the order of the pictures so that was a pass.

ita,

I don't know if your recipe calls for eggs, but if so, you should beat your eggs with the milk/yogurt separately. mix the dry stuff separately, then put them together and fold in. This has made a diff for me.

you can now buy the video of "This American Life" show from last May.

It was really incredible. Rakoff's piece (from memory) is so much more affecting now.

[link]