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.

Not all parents who homeschool do it because they're in a craxy religious group. Sometimes public schools SUCK and are actively dangerous, and private school is cost-prohibitive.

A number of my sister's musician friends were homeschooled to allow for more time/emphasis on their music. That was the first I'd really heard of people home schooling for non religious reasons.

FWIW, some of them really suffered socially and just in terms of life skills. Mostly not in irreparable ways, but sometimes... I'm thinking of one family in particular - five kids, all talented musicians, all home schooled - and with I think one exception, all pretty fucked-up adults. One is actually missing and hasn't been seen or heard from in several years.

And yeah, I know that's a way out-there example. But it does sometime seem to me that for some families, home schooling just incubates (and insulates) the craxy.

Like Hec, though, I believe in the public schools as a fundamental foundation of a the kind of society we want to have. And I think by starving and denigrating them, we're losing something so so important and I wish I had solutions instead of laments, and I have to run out now so I shouldn't have even started this without the time to put my thoughts down the way I want to, and no, this is not how they taught me to write in the public schools. Later, y'all.

I actually had a friend try to talk me out of getting married because I was betraying feminism.

"Would you like some insanity with your troll logic?"

FWIW, some of them really suffered socially and just in terms of life skills.

Well, I think I suffered socially and in terms of life skills at my particular public school. At least, I feel like I spent a good chunk of my 20's playing catch-up compared to most of my college friends. Most of whom were also products of public schools, just better ones.

3. The toy is alive! ALIVE! Run! Flee!

Yes. Only the toy might just be possessed. Either flee or grab a sword.