You know, speaking of both marriage and childrearing, I have been SHOCKED at how much shit people still get for their various choices regarding same. A woman I know had people actually call her a bad mother for going back to work after having a baby. In 2005. Are you fucking kidding me? I've also heard a ridiculous amount of judgementalness around woman changing their names -- on both sides.

Can we all enter the new millennium, people? There are many ways to live one's life!!

t /pet peeve

I got married at 22, as well (as did most of the folks I was friends with at the time), but we all know how well that worked out.

There are many ways to live one's life!!

This is like that crazy "people are different" thing you keep pushing, isn't it?

This is like that crazy "people are different" thing you keep pushing, isn't it?

"Yes! We are all individuals!"

"I'm not."

Jesse has a tolerance agenda! She's probably in league with Sponge Bob Squarepants!

I'm becoming quite the zealot, really.

Doesn't Emmett attend a private school?

Nope, public all the way. Public in a suburb populated about equally by wealthy people and UC Berkeley faculty, staff and grad students and therefore at least as well funded and challenging as the best private schools you could find, but very much public.

I have a friend, firmly nonreligious but very earthy and crunchy and holistic, who, last I heard, was bound and determined to homeschool her two boys (at present just toddlers, so the homeschooling is theoretical at this point). However, the last I heard about the homeschooling was almost a year ago; given that she is presently in an evening-classes nursing program and about 3,500 months pregnant with her third and last child, she may have changed her mind about the homeschooling. She's a brilliant mother and her sons are gems and she's incredibly driven and focused, but I think that if she continues planning both the nursing program and the homeschooling while coping with a newborn, her friends and DH are going to stage an intervention, because something's got to give and none of us want it to be her or the boys.

Cindy, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Christopher's screening. Please also be aware that your description of him as the fluffy-bunny king of the jungle nearly killed me.

Oh, I hate work right now. I want to be (a) at home watching noir movies, or (b) back in LA having a proper visit unspoiled by anyone's food poisoning, with more Lee, more Robin, and less sickitude, and time to see more Emeline and her parents, and possibly some Frannie and her parents and the rest of the mob of LAistas and SoCalistas whom we totally missed. Also, chicken and waffles, or anyhow waffles. Work is bitter and hateful.

My mother married when she was 18. They've celebrated their 43rd anniversary.

That's all I got on marrying young.

I once attended a training course with someone who was big in the homeschooling movement. As in, he worked for a homeschooling advocacy group. We had to prepare a mock trial together. It was a miracle we were still on speaking terms at trial time -- one of the worst wear-it-on-his-sleeve religious nuts I ever knew.

That's all I got on homeschooling.

So much for anecdotes that may or may not reflect general reality.

ION, a toy of Annabel's that's supposed to make music only when you spin a wheel or press buttons has taken to playing random snatches of music when no one is touching it. What's going on here?

1. Low batteries
2. Something's just broken/shorted out
3. The toy is alive! ALIVE! Run! Flee!
4. Annabel is controlling it with her spicy brain. Decisions about her education are irrelevant, as she will rule the world by age 5.

I was engaged for a year at 20- married at 21 after 2 months of dating, 4 months of living together and 3 years of friendship. Seems to have worked (mostly) just fine.

Man, it just hit me that not only have Mr. H and I been married longer than we've known each other- I passed that a while back. But I've known him now for over a decade.

ETA: I should make the above clearer. I've known Mr. H for a total of almost 12 years now. I'd known him for 3-4 before we dated and we've been married for almost 8.