About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
We’re finally getting winter weather hereabouts, and the Sierras are getting snowpack! As a drought state, as much as I don’t enjoy slogging through the wet, I eagerly watch weather reports every winter hoping we’ll get enough snow and rain to refill our reservoirs.
“It’s a strange phenomenon, but millionaires swear that the more they give, the more will come back to them.“: 2018 is all about 6 and 8. For the first time in my life, I’m going to trust more in the belief that giving back, as the right thing to do with our good fortune, will work out for us in the end, and focus less on keeping the numbers under our strict control. This is a fuzzy sort of thought I’ve never had before and I hope it pans out.
Tanja’s after my ultra risk averse heart with the side hustle year now that that they’ve retired.
Didn’t science say that sharing your goals makes you accountable more likely to complete them? Trello’s got several reasons why sharing goals might be counterproductive. I haven’t pinpointed exactly why that’s how it works for me but I usually don’t share too many goals ahead of doing a good amount of work on them first to ensure that I will follow through. When I prematurely share, I never start. Is that you?
I’ve been subsisting off Kindle First and borrowing from Amazon for months because my Kindle is broken and I haven’t found a replacement yet but we finally made some time to get to the library and get our new library cards. SHEER BLISS!
I’ve been reading up a storm, and losing sleep at night, which coincides with some massive pain flares that make me lose sleep anyway so at least I wasn’t bored. The bad thing is that my phone is too heavy during those flares too, so it’s being bored or hurting my hands a bit more.
The Birdwoman’s Palate, Laksmi Pamuntjak
(free Kindle First book) I didn’t know what to expect but I saw “food” in the blurb and hopped right on it. It did not disappoint. The translation was excellent, the prose was straightforward and imminently readable, the food coverage made me want to visit Indonesia for two weeks. It’s never been on my list before but it is now!
Is it better to be the comparatively poor kid in a wealthy school district or a relatively rich kid in a poor school district?
I asked this question on Twitter and the responses initially leaned hard toward the second choice, which would be good confirmation bias, except I’m actively second-guessing our decision. Then a lot of responses flooded in pointing out that the first choice is better for the poor kid to have access to connections and better resources.
That brought on a facepalm because I hadn’t thought about it that way and that’s stupid because ….
I lived the first scenario. As a poor kid in a modestly wealthy school district, I got a good education and the relative wealth of my peers wasn’t obvious. Kids weren’t obsessed with designer brand names back then, wealth wasn’t the ostentatious thing that it’s become today between Instagram and new iPhones for ten year olds.
The premise of this article, that parenting largely has no real effect on the development of a child into adulthood, as presented is a bit disturbing. He claims that reading to kids doesn’t matter. Hm. Really.
But then the concluding paragraph summed up much of our approach to parenting:
Natural selection has wired into us a sense of attachment for our offspring. There is no need to graft on beliefs about “the power of parenting” in order to justify our instinct that being a good parent is important. Consider this: what if parenting really doesn’t matter? Then what? The evidence for pervasive parenting effects, after all, looks like a foundation of sand likely to slide out from under us at any second. If your moral constitution requires that you exert god-like control over your kid’s psychological development in order to treat them with the dignity afforded any other human being, then perhaps it is time to recalibrate your moral compass; does it actually point north or just spin like a washing machine (see Pinker’s work for this same point made more eloquently)? If you want happy children, and you desire a relationship with them that lasts beyond when they’re old enough to fly the nest, then be good to your kids. Just know that it probably will have little effect on the person they will grow into.
I have no idea how much parenting does or doesn’t matter. We want JB to be a good human; we will model decent behavior and explain why we do what we do, and most importantly strive not to break zir in the popular authoritarian style that the previous generation seems fond of. But in the end, I’m not sure that who ze becomes is really in our hands. How well we cultivate our relationship is but that’s the best we can do. It’s still disquieting but in a different random lightning strike kind of way.
JB (who definitely needs a new blog name as ze is no longer a baby but probably still The Unstoppable something) is turning 3.
I don’t know how to feel about year 3. Everyone keeps harping on how much harder 3 is over 2, but 2 was pretty dang hard. Didn’t we get a lot of that difficulty out of the way yet? No?
We are exhausted many days keeping up with the mood changes and high spirits. But ze is suddenly so much more capable too! But only if ze is motivated.
We’re having real, if distracted and fractured, conversation punctuated with random Christmas songs and outtakes from one of 4 favorite movies. Ze can help around the house a bit, is interested in the world, is interested in sharing zir thoughts with us.
Learning & responsibilities
New lessons and skills
Generally if you want JB to learn to do anything new, ze is interested. If it’s a repetitive chore, then the shiny tends wears off after the second or third time. That’s not nearly enough time for zir to competently do anything so I like to make up silly little songs to keep zir entertained/interested. Bragging rights naturally top the list of motivations, but ze doesn’t have much to revel in when we’re talking about necessary and not fun things like washing your own hair.
This is a reader requested post on a subject that’s been percolating for some time.
I say “our strategy”, but PiC trusts me with our money, even when I appear to be giving it away with reckless abandon. (Or maybe that’s how it feels to me, and he knows I’m rarely reckless with money.)
Here, I’m going to share how we’re structuring our giving this year.
Warning: I’ve never been this organized before, but we’re also not all that organized by objective measures so, lower your expectations please!
NOTE: Cutting off Dad doesn’t mean we’re flush with cash now so that hasn’t had any effect on our giving. We originally needed to stop supporting him because we couldn’t afford it any longer. When we moved, our mortgage and our taxes tripled. YEEK.
With a system like this, it’s a shock that any guns ever get traced: This is the maddening, inefficient way gun tracing works, and there is no effort afoot to make it work any better. For all the talking we do about imposing new limits on assault weapons, or stronger background checks, nobody talks about fixing the way we keep track—or don’t keep track—of where all the guns are. I had NO idea things were this bad!
We’re finally getting winter weather hereabouts, and the Sierras are getting snowpack! As a drought state, as much as I don’t enjoy slogging through the wet, I eagerly watch weather reports every winter hoping we’ll get enough snow and rain to refill our reservoirs.
What I read
“…education is the silver bullet. Education is everything.” 
Mixed feelings
This is a reader requested post on a subject that’s been percolating for some time.