Biology

Nothing irks me more than to be told I can't do something. Recently, I tried to buy seemingly innocuous chemicals and was told that the company, Flinn Scientific, would not sell to homeschoolers or individuals. I suppose I could understand if I were trying to buy hydrochloric acid, but I was trying to locate pectinase, an enzyme that when added to applesauce, causes more juice to be released from the sauce. It's used in food production, for goodness sakes. The other was cellulase, used to soften jeans material. I wonder if the terrorists are planning to drive us insane by ruining all our jeans and making our applesauce runny? Whatever could I do with these two items that makes them restricted? I'll have to study on that one.

What really made me mad though is that with a chemical engineering degree, and just two students, more likely the chemicals would be safer with me than in a room full of thirty teenagers and a biology teacher. Oh, well, it's a crazy world.

I ended up buying a forensics lab from Carolina Biological that covers the concepts we are studying right now: carbohydrates, polysaccharides and enzymes. Lauren, who loves the show "Bones", will be much more interested in detecting saliva on "evidence" than she would be seeing if she could squeeze more juice out of applesauce. It looks fun.

I'm, in the meantime, trying to find my humor that's gone missing with a husband in the middle of peak season, gone most days dark to dark, teens that consider me their personal driver and social director, and a little boy that suddenly developed a fever this afternoon.