Also, we barely have any food waste these days as everything gets fed to Grace. I know that sounds awful, but we rarely have spoiled food or peels or anything like that.

We should compost fruit from the tree that gets a bite from animals, but we don't.

Are Jews in the US that different from British Jews? Because they just had straight hair at my mostly Jewish school. Same with the Jewish friends I made in Canada. The white people I know who had been down that stressful hair-straightening path were all non-Jews.

I don't really know enough British or Canadian Jews to be able to comment on them.

Do you have the concomitant good hair issues where you're judged as militant if you wear your hair as is?

Not in that way. It's ... I can't find a good way to describe it. It's like, little kids with curly hair are cute. But around the time that you're supposed to start caring about how you look, when you start wearing makeup and heels and stuff, you're also "supposed" to start straightening you hair, and I guess it's somewhat equivalent to not wearing makeup or not waxing your eyebrows? That's not quite right, but it's the best I can come up with now.

Or you're a traitor if you do alter it?

Not really that, either. People who straighten it might get some flak from people who don't, but I think it's mostly teasing. I've seen things in some older books and movies where someone Jewish has changed their name and, while not actually denying their Judaism, is pretty much trying to to just be "American," and some other Jewish character says something like, "She's still obviously a Jew -- just look at that hair." Since that kind of passing doesn't really happen as often nowadays, you don't hear stuff like that as much, but I've definitely heard friends explain that they got their hair straightened because "It looks too Jewish."

Or, sometimes, because "It looks too black." I know some curly Jewish women who go to black hair salons because they say that that's where the stylists know what to do with their hair, and some others who are offended at the suggestion, because "My hair isn't like black hair at all! Right? It isn't, right?" I remember one older relative, when I was little, told my mother that she shouldn't let me play outside in the sun so much, because "That child is starting to look black." I don't know how much of that was just because of my skin, and how much my hair contributed to it, or whether she would have said it at all if I had straight hair, or whether a non-Jewish white elderly relative would have said the same thing about a non-Jewish darkish little kid or not. There's a whole lot of different stuff going on there.

So seeing it treated like a pan-Jewish issue? Eye opening.

"Jewish hair" meaning curly has been around for a while. In all those eugenics books from the late 1800s and early 1900s, the description of "characteristics of the Jew" pretty much always includes curly hair.

Oh, and yeah, we have rats. Smart urban rats. I don't want to encourage rats. And call me weird, but I don't want worms in the house. Which is funny coming from me because I'm pretty pro-slimy things. But, no.

We had grain moths a few months ago, which I was too skeeved by to deal with...until I remembered the worm population down the hall. If anyone is considering it, I would note that yes, worms are kind of gross but since they don't like light they generally don't go anywhere and dive down into their bedding when you open the container.

Here it is! Taxidermied bullfrog playing bass.

I call him Charles Bullfrog Mingus.

I don't have anything growing that I'd fertilise, and I don't have anywhere to put a colony, really. If there was apartment building-level composting I'd cheerfully sort and dispose appropriately, because I am more grossed out by the idea of stuff rotting in my garbage bin than of worms eating it. The moth infestation that squicked the living shit out of me--THEY WERE IN MY FOOD. As long as I'm not competing for resources, I'm a lot less delicate.

I wonder if braids would feel too heavy and cornrows to distracting

I don't think cornrows would be distracting. I mean, any more than having hair is.

Here it is! Taxidermied bullfrog playing bass.

Awww....

I call him Charles Bullfrog Mingus.

OMG, you *have* to tell the Bloggess.

Awesome!

Why do I think it might not make it to your brother?

Why do I think it might not make it to your brother?

I really want to keep it, but I'm going to give it to him. And I'll casually mention, based on his reaction, that I will be happy to give it a home if he thinks it's horrifying.

But he won't. I mean, this is him: [link] If you put overalls on the bullfrog, they'd be indistinguishable.