Duggars' Day Out
(It's unclear at the time of this writing how much far-right agitation is responsible for the Republican gains yesterday, but there's one person who didn't get mentioned along with Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle: John David Duggar. He was running for Alderman in his city, but lost. It's surely all for the best; John seems like a decent kid, but in an interview done when he first announced his candidacy, he was hard pressed to come up with a platform of any kind and was barely able to say something about taxes being too high. I would say that nobody is comfortable with putting an extremely sheltered, poorly educated kid in a position of even limited authority, but one of the Bates boys recently won an election, so there you go.)
Anyway! On to last week's episode, in which: Stranded toys are rescued, Anna cooks rice; and Josh stops drinking Quiverfull brand kool-aid.
The episode opens with sound guy Jim knocking a ball off of one of the open beams dividing the first and second floors with his boom mike. The little boys below giggle in delight and try to decide who gets to throw it up there again.
Michelle is still recovering; Jim Bob says that the kids are doing a great job of stepping up while she's out, but seriously -- we know who runs the household, so it's no surprise that it runs smoothly without Michelle. Elsewhere, Anna is making breakfast for Mackynzie. She is super excited, because she's learned that if you grind rice and then cook it, it becomes baby food. My teenager wandered into the room at this point, and watched this whole cooking sequence in astonishment before finally laughing and laughing at the idea that an adult woman would only just now be discovering the fact that you can turn raw rice into food. I see his point, but then again, we know how the Duggars eat, and while Anna's family was smaller, they seem to have been poorer too, so maybe this is about my kid being privileged enough to grow understanding some food basics.
(Then again, rice is cheap and easy to cook, so . . . Anna should get credit, though, for feeding her baby healthy food; remember Michelle spooning some monstrosity into Jordyn's mouth directly out of a can, while the baby was lying upside down on the couch? I'd take ignorance that ends up in the right place over that any day.)
Later, Anna decides to take some of her little sisters-in-law to the park to make things easier on the big girls. Speaking of, the new school teacher, Jessa, is flopped despondently on the floor with some of the little boys trying to keep order in the classroom. Yikes. She usually has her game face on all the time; I wonder what's going on in this scene? Anyway, Anna arrives to find Jennifer crying at the stair railing because James threw her baby doll onto one of the ceiling beams. That J.O.Y. training is sure working out! Anyway, Anna rescues the doll (although her vigor in getting the dust off seems to cause Jennifer further distress, because one of the camera crew points out she thinks Anna is spanking the doll) and loads the little girls, plus Jason because he finished his schoolwork and helped get the little girls ready, into the H2 that Josh has her driving these days. She specifically wanted to never have to drive a Hummer, but Josh is the boss of her in all ways, so . . . H2 it is.
This is the first time Mackynzie has been to the park, and both she and Anna enjoy the outing. At one point, Mackynzie and Jordyn swing back to back in an infant swing, and it's way too adorable. Anna says she enjoyed taking the little girls out, but in an interview she and Josh talk about how much they are enjoying having just one baby. They don't come right out and say that they aren't on the same crazy train the Duggar parents are, but it seems pretty clear that there won't be 20 kids in Josh's future. It's nice to watch one baby on this show enjoy the attention of doting parents after having seen so many other babies lost in the crowd when the next one came along. Later, all the girls go out for frozen custard (although there's some business later where Anna tells Josh they went out to lunch instead? I don't know.)
Josh, in the meantime, has been at an auction picking up cars for his lot. He gets at least one that's been wrecked, and he makes the point that he sells his cars as is. It's how used car lots generally run, but that was a snarky bit of editing there, I think. Josh also apparently gives ten percent of his income to "charity," which is probably more like tithing to Bill Gothard, but he does donate a van to a family in need. Jim Bob talks about how much Josh has grown into his job, and Josh is doing so well that he needs to hire another employee to run the second locations.
After the custard, Anna, Jill, Jinger, and Jana visit a woman who does garage sales for other people and currently has a lot of little girl clothes. Jinger is on hand because she's on laundry duty these days, so she knows who wears what size and who needs what. In a really odd moment, a cat walks up behind Jill on the back of a chair or couch, and stretches up to pat her ponytail. That was random. Also, kind of funny.
Finally, Anna says she's enjoying the H2 a little, and jokes that since she uses cloth diapers it offsets the carbon cost. It's an annoying and stupid thing to say, but it's nice to see her being genuine. And it's good that she uses cloth. Geez: organic baby food, cloth diapers, and making noises about enjoying a small family? I wonder if they're on the path to excommunication or shunning or whatever it is fundamentalist quasi-cults do. Stay tuned . . .
Next time: The big girls wear special skirts to fight fires in. That could end up being exciting in a really bad way.
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