I've always wanted a Devon Rex. Except for the shoulder thing. I'm finding I have less tolerance for cat neediness than I thought.

Damn, Kat. I have no advice to give, being that I already baptized Matilda and now I'm completely of two minds about it. And I still believe and I still deeply love the spiritual practices of my faith and the way practicing them has led me to think and feel.

But I'm just so fucking angry at the people currently steering the whole beautiful thing right over a cliff (they'll take the whole thing down to avoid having to own their shitty decisions and the lives they've wrecked) that I sit there every week and seethe, and then I cry, and then Matilda pats my arm and worries about me and I wonder what the fuck I'm subjecting her to.

What makes me sad is I've known some incredible catholic priests (my dad worked with some of them for Sanctuary. Fucking saved lives in C. America.) And their leadership is totally failing them and their flocks.

This is for sure true and depressing. But there's often a disconnect, particularly in the US, between the folks in the Vatican and the folks on the street. It's galling to think that the Church that inspired Dorothy Day has spawned this mess.

Well, JZ, truth told, K is way more pragmatic than I. Being public school teachers, both of us see the shortcomings of our work and she wouldn't mind sending Noah to Catholic school (and I wouldn't mind him going). It would be easier if he were baptized is her thinking.

It's funny because I love Catholic school (which is why I'm a closet Xavier fan each year around March Madness) and I think it's some of the best education you can get, in terms of discipline and depth.

But Noah has two mommies and since I'm the Catholic I wonder how much ass kissing and confessing and backsliding I'd have to do to get through the baptism itself. Then again, maybe the Church would be happy to rescue adorable Noah from his sinner moms?

Kat, one of my jewish friends got a decent education in catholic school (public schools were equiv, but there were extenuating circs,) so even if you want to forgo the religious aspect.

OTOH, my mother was raised methodist, dad a lutheran until the father threw him bodily out of confirmation class (he argued semantics and god and dude couldn't deal) and they raised me quaker and I went to a quaker school despite already knowing I didn't believe any of it, but appreciated the values. I believe in beauty, what I can see and the damn bitch called hope. Fuck, I'm sending a bunch of Hubble shit to a bunch of evangelicals now. I'll never agree with them, but their heart is right and it isn't contradicting mine.

I've always wanted a Devon Rex. Except for the shoulder thing. I'm finding I have less tolerance for cat neediness than I thought.

I didn't even know about the shoulder thing when I got Senor. At first I thought it was a kitten thing when he did it. But he did it as an adult too. Freaked out a few people over the years....

JZ, I've been thinking about you all the time recently. (For better or worse, you're how I put a face on the best of Cathoicism.)

Like I said, Weakland is someone I respect enormously. And I get -

No, I don't get. But I'm trying to understand how incredibly painful this all must be for you. To be truthful, I'm not sure how you stay there. But I also get that that's not at all the same for me as for you.

D'oh. I'm so out of whatever, the 2 moms thing never even occurred to me. . Though from a mainstream Catholic community back 15 years, I'm clearly not thinking in that mindspace anymore. THANK GOODNESS.

HA! Sara! That's precisely the issue. If he were baptized, it would mitigate the two mommies bit.

We also picked a preschool. It's in the neighborhood we hope to move to next spring, the one that has actually super good schools, even public ones. But we took the check up today and the kids were all outside playing and it's the right place, I think, for Noah. Or it's an okay place for him. I'm sort of bereft about Aria and him not going there, but really, I am too impatient to wait to see if we really will get one of the elusive spaces.

Plus the preschool we chose? They do an ice cream social each year and we went last year and liked it. They are also the cheapest option we have ($790 a month) and they do sort of fun and interesting academics, more so than other schools we've looked at.

AND the director remembers us from a preschool cattle call. She remembered that we had twins and remembered our faces.

AND, we can do some part time summer transition before school starts. He'll go for mornings for 2 weeks before labor day, then another full week before the first day of school. It's the best way we can arrange it.

OK, here's my love of my parents: I sincerely doubt my dad believed in god when I was born, but mom still did. We went to quaker meetings where I mostly got schooled in the new and old testaments. Sorta. Really what I learned was the quaker (of the west) manner, which was this whole witnessing and human rights thing. And then I watched (and fretted) as my faithless father practiced those principles alongside those who believed.

What I got (and what he didn't) is that there is a conduit there, a bridge. He crosses it but denies it existence. I see it, but I haven't crossed it in practice.