Things our Kids Probably Think are Completely Normal

Hi Everyone,

Mad Herbalist here with another bit of rambling. Sometimes ideas just pop into my head that need to be fleshed out.

Today’s brain jam was when I started wondering what other people’s houses are like because surely they don’t look like ours!

Mad Scientist Goods is a family business, and this family business has a habit of spilling over into family life. Not literally, most of the time. Although that happens too.

Today, for instance, there are measuring cups everywhere. There are things out on the stove that most definitely do not belong in the kitchen anymore. There are more messes than I can count. Yet despite the disorder, or perhaps because of it, our kids have so many unique experiences and memories.

They know what grams are because they’ve spent years watching us weigh things. They’ve seen soap being made, creams being mixed, formulas being changed, labels being painstakingly designed and printed and cut out, packages being filled, and experiments that worked beautifully alongside experiments that absolutely did not.

“Come smell this,” is a completely ordinary sentence in our house. So are, “What do you think of this?” and, “How about we try doing it that way instead.” The last bits of every batch of magnesium cream that don’t make it into tins find their way onto (but hopefully not into) bellies.

Those sentences might mean “Does this smell good?” They might also mean “Does this feel better than the last batch?” Or they might mean I made something weird and need another human being to confirm that I messed something up.

Sometimes, of course, the question is, “What was that sound?” This may mean the last beaker just shattered on the floor and I have to figure out how to get to the brush and shovel without injuring myself again.

Fortunately, we have never yet had to call the fire service out to deal with a HAZMAT situation.

My cat likes to hide in boxes

We broke an unspoken rule last week. Nobody, absolutely nobody, gets rid of a cardboard box without checking with the cats first. We got rid of an absurd number of boxes last week, and our spottiest cat decided he wasn’t adequately consulted about it and has been grouchy ever since.

A box may have arrived containing ingredients or supplies, but once emptied its ownership becomes a matter of some dispute. We see useful packaging. The children see uncommitted craft materials. The cats see newly available real estate. The result is rather like medieval warfare, only without armoured knights: lots of bickering, raiding, pillaging, and, when the Mad Scientist has finally had enough, burning.

The ideas factory

The boxes arrive, of course, because we’ve run out of something, or are about to run out of it. Most people, when they run out of something for their household, just put it on the shopping list.

Around here, there is an intermediate step: “Could we make this instead of buying it?” Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is technically yes, but buying it would be vastly more sensible. And sometimes that question is how a new product begins.

Which brings us to possibly the most dangerous sentence spoken in our house:

“I have an idea.”

Both the Mad Scientist and I have been known to say it.

The idea might mean five minutes at the kitchen counter. It might mean several hours of research. It might mean ingredients, notebooks and scales suddenly appearing everywhere.

It might mean one of us looks at the other and says, “That’s interesting. Why did it do that?” This has at times resulted in the Mad Scientist making obscure remarks about “chromophores” and “functional groups.”

And occasionally it means we end up with something we like so much that, eventually, it gets a label and becomes something we sell.

The funny thing is that none of this seems particularly unusual to us anymore and I suspect it doesn’t seem unusual to our kids at all.

They’re growing up in a house where Mum and Dad make things. Where questions are worth investigating. Where you don’t necessarily assume the supermarket shelf is the only way to obtain something. Where failed experiments aren’t particularly remarkable, because you can change something and try again.

There are certainly easier ways to run a household. There are certainly tidier ones. But I like the fact that our children are growing up knowing that thinking for yourself and giving something a go can be okay.

One day they may discover that not everybody has scales all over the house, that “come smell this” isn’t a routine summons, and that most families can throw away a cardboard box without first negotiating its release from a cat.

Until then, this is just home.

~The Mad Herbalist