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Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The first time we read American Gods, C said to me “This is why I can never write a book, because I could never be this good.” The truth is, there are very few people who are as talented at writing as Neil Gaiman, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane continues his tradition of authorial excellence. I cannot truly give a summary of the plot without giving too much away. I think it is best to say this is a book about memory, childhood, and the way how we view the world changes as we grow older. It is also a book about friendship and sacrifice, and…
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Why Our Daughter Does Not Have a College Fund
For a lot of parents, the second they find out they are pregnant, they start thinking about saving for college for their little one. And it makes sense. College is expensive, and if we can help our kids start off their adult life with as little debt as possible, that would be great. Because the truth is, while student loan debt is often considered “good” debt, kind of like a mortgage, in that you are getting something for it, it has its negatives, too – especially if the student needs more than the federally guaranteed loans and gets some from private lenders. After all, if our kids get in major…
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Ethics in Foster Parenting
Most of the time when we think about bad foster parents, we think of the worst case scenarios, those relatively few cases where the foster parents never should have been foster parents to begin with, and the children are abused or end up dead. And those are terrible tragedies. But they are also very rare. There are other kinds of bad foster parents, though, foster parents who actually look amazing and loving and wonderful from the outside. I call these the “unethical” foster parents. Nothing they do is against that law. They often love the children they care for very deeply. But the damage they do to children is just…
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We Have the Money, We Need a Plan
Both of the Democratic candidates for President have put forward the idea of free college for America’s youth. Next year, Oregon will have very low cost ($50/term) for all community college students. Tennessee and Kentucky are both working on free community college for their residents, too. As a parent (and particularly as a parent who will only have half the time most parents do to save for college), I am a fan for free college – community college or a four year program. And I have seen the studies that say the plans put forward to pay for the program work. The money is there. I do not doubt that.…
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Why the DNC Does Not Like Sanders
Sometimes I think I should keep my mouth shut about politics, but honestly, it is only a passing thought. My brother, father, grandfathers, and uncles all served in the military. They fought for our right to speak our minds, to participate fully and equally in the democratic process, and keeping my mouth shut would only serve to dishonor their sacrifices. I know that my father does not always agree with my point of view, but I also know he would be greatly disappointed in me if I did not express it. So here I am, talking politics again. I have said it before, and I will say it again –…
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I Like Other Women
Before anyone gets all excited here, I am not coming out as a lesbian, or even bi-sexual. Nor am I expressing support for the “mistress” in a non-open relationship. But I feel this is important to say because for a decade and a half, from my late teens to my early thirties, I would have told you that I did not like other women. That I got along with men, but not women. I just did not have anything in common with them. I will also tell you that this was demonstrably not true. During those years, I did have more male friends than female friends, but with the exception…
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An Open Letter to Three Young Men
Dear Young Men Sitting Next to Me at Starbucks: I do not know you. I did not interact with you in any way. But you sat at the tiny table right next to mine, and I could not help but overhear your conversation and notice your interactions, and there are some things I would like to tell you. Because I must refer to you as something, I am going to call the one who plays football Jock Bro-Dude, the one who plays drums Musician Bro-Dude, and the one who wants to be seen as a leader and not as a bro-dude as Wanna Be. Jock Bro-Dude: You are annoying.…
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Book Review: The Bees by Laline Paull
The Amazon description of The Bees by Laline Paull starts thusly: The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games in this brilliantly imagined debut set in an ancient culture where only the queen may breed and deformity means death. I’ll be honest, it never even occurred to me to think of the book as some dystopian society, because it is a book about bees, that gets bee culture fairly accurate. Now maybe this is because as a girl, I read all those horse and other animal books that took the point of view of an animal in their societies. Now, there was a lot of humanization in the books I read as a…
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Forget “The Talk”
My theory is that puberty does not hit until kids are pre-teens/teens so that as a parent you have time to build up that relationship with them, to know them, to have their inherent trust. You have over a decade to build the relationship you need with your child for the both of you to survive puberty. Pop Tart came to us at 9. I have less than 5 years. And I have known that from the beginning. I have known that I had less than 5 years to establish a relationship in which we could discuss bodies and sex and puberty and boys and girls all the myriad of…
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A Whole Bunch of Nothing
When I am really feeling something, the words just pour out of me, and I end up with ridiculously long blog posts. And then there are nights like tonight. There are things I am thinking about, but nothing that has my passion. Everything I have started to write tonight I have then deleted. It just was not quite what I wanted. But I feel like I have to get something down after 3 weeks away from my writing night. So now you get bits and pieces. I gave myself permission to stop reading After Alice, the newest book from Gregory Maguire. We went on vacation last week, a vacation…
