When I was little, I was utterly aghast that my friends' jewish grandmother had never eaten a cheeseburger! Oh, and how she disapproved that they had. (They lazily kept kosher. During holy days, they definitely did. The rest of the time? Hit or miss.)

I remember when they were off in Mexico on sabbatical, we'd eat at her apartment (attached to their house) once a week, and she'd put on a whole proper multicourse meal. Changing tablecloths, using different ovens, etc. I loved her matzoball soup. I'm pretty sure she explained why she did everything with a good dose of religious education, but I was young enough, I sadly don't recall a lot of it. She was so very proper, could be a bit of a pill, but her heart was huge.

Huh, I haven't thought about those dinners in years.

She just looks at me like the question's absurd.

Well, duh. It is. It gets her more brushing.

It's always seemed to me that long-haired cats are the preeniest. I mean, most cats preen like there is no tomorrow, but longhair cats the most. Or maybe I've just had a lot of longhaired diva-cats.

So I'm watching a PBS thing on caring for your parents. And maybe I shouldn't. Because I'm really not ready to face this, but it is in the back of my head in the past few years. I mean, they are fine now. But dad's talk of retirement, mom's physical limits... it's coming. And I know they have very strong views about kids being primary caregivers, having done that themselves. But ... there are so many variable.

So it is scary. But it will come and we will manage.

Oh god, that scares the crap out of me -- especially seeing how much my mother and her two siblings have done for her parents over the years, and knowing there's just one of me. I assume at some point I'll have to move back up there.

I am Purposefully not watching th PBS snow. My mother told we many years ago that I wouldn't need to take care of her, but of course I will.

I have a new kitty and she will not stop meowing at closet. she is a tortie, but I '_ think maybe there is still evidence of my old cat. She needs to stop because She is making we sad.

I guess that's the one good thing about my original parent abandoning me. I don't have to worry about taking care of her when she needs it.

(My grandfather adopted me, and I was his primary care-giver for the last few years of his life, along with my beloved cousin whom he also co-reared. So though I sound like a flippant lil bitch, I took care of the one who cared enough to take care of me. And it was hard and it was scary.)

Ayup, Jesse. I mean, I've got a sibling. (My mom had 5 when it came to her dad, but even then there were constraints for various sibs where it was decided they not have to make direct decisions.) But brother's got a family of his own, and if there is hard stuff, I'm probably in a better position to do the heavy lifting.

But I need to talk to my brother about this. We've touched on it, vaguely. Cause, you know, it's scary. And the parents. Uhg. We briefly touched on it during the Peru trip, but that was with the assumption dad might fall off a cliff (and for 30 minutes, my mom thought he had!) and so a different game plan entirely.

Have either of you seen The Savages? I haven't, but I'd like to.

Liv just pulled off a running tackle on Owen. I swear, I didn't know whether to correct her or cheer her on.

Damn, this parenting stuff is HARD.

Anyone heard of this case in California, where a group of homeschool folks have sued the UC?

PZ Sez:

Mike Dunford has a series of articles on a recent California court decision — in brief, Christian homeschoolers tried to sue California universities to force them to accept courses taught with Christianist literalist creationist textbooks as legitimate, college-level science credit, and they lost. They lost hard.

The whole series of articles is fascinating, but I'll just quote one bit:

The second instance of paranoiac tendencies is a bit more troublesome. The Plaintiffs appear to believe that not being Christian is evidence that you are biased against Christians. They submitted a list of actions and beliefs that they allege demonstrate that UC disapproved of their religion. One of the items that they included as evidence of the official state bias against them is that:

(5) "The senior reviewer is Buddhist, and the reviewer who handled religious school science courses and drafted most policies is Jewish..."

Asserting that non-Christian religious beliefs is evidence of hostility toward Christianity is quite simply wrong-headed. It relies on the assumption that everyone has the same hostile attitude toward other religious beliefs that they seem to consistently exhibit. It also relies on the assumption that they can only receive a fair hearing from like-minded people. The judge handled that last bit quite well:

Additionally, allegation (5) cannot support a hostility claim. UC is under no duty to employ only those individuals whose religious beliefs coincide with Plaintiffs.

Heh. Also, duh.

From Summary Judgment in the California Creationist Case: The Lawyers for the Creationists Argue Like Creationists (Part 2 of 3)

Part One: [link]

eta: More from PZ:

But that's not what the judge in this case ruled on; rather, Behe's defense of these books was that it was "abusive" to ask students to subscribe to an idea like evolution with which they disagree. Setting aside the obvious point that the whole point of education is to introduce students to a multitude of ideas with which they may or may not agree, the judge pointed out that the books which Behe approved flatly state that Christians must accept creationist conclusions—unlike our biology books, which don't demand any religious litmus test of their readers—and were therefore perfect examples of exactly the problem he was complaining about.