I’ll be on Sheila Liaugminas’ show on Relevant Radio again tonight, talking about abstinence and abstinence-only education with Elizabeth Duffy, Sam Rocha, and Marc Barnes. In preparation for that, I spent a little time reading back through my post that kicked off this sexy party, Sam’s and Elizabeth‘s responses, Marc’s two pieces on the purity culture, and then my own (frightening) comment section. Basically, most people seemed to be hopelessly confused about 1) why I wrote the post I wrote,... Read more

Kassie was only here for about 36 hours, but it is amazing how much more human I feel after 36 solid hours of constant adult conversation. I feel like my brain has been jump-started out of “peanut butter and time-out sandwich” mode and back into “contemplation of morality and Doctor Who” mode. While the former is sometimes necessary, the latter is always preferable. Glorious, even. Sienna is smitten with Kassie. She has been since Kassie first came to visit us... Read more

#7 So my “sloppy seconds” post went a little viral this week. It was shared many thousands of times on social media (can I just say that I ♥ the vanity counter at the bottom of my posts?) and I got more pageviews in one day than I usually get in two weeks. It was pretty awesome, watching my stat counter have an identity crisis and think it was Jen‘s stat counter. Lincoln had a fever, though, and was extremely clingy,... Read more

I’m still sick. Pneumonia is so lame. I haven’t had it since I was a kid, and I was imagining that getting over it would be like getting over bronchitis or a sinus infection: here’s your antibiotics and some cough medicine, and bam, 2 days later you end up forgetting to take the rest of your antibiotics because you feel so much better. No, pneumonia is not like that at all. The doctor put me on two concurrent antibiotics. I... Read more

I don’t know if it’s the lingering pneumonia, the cocktail of medicine, or the fact that I took the night shift with Lincoln last night so the Ogre could rest, but this whole day I have felt like I am walking through a dream. The day itself seems to have always been happening, slowly, slowly, but what I do within it is irrelevant. Everything seems to belong to the day but me; my children laughing, the baby crawling, the bread... Read more

It’s 7:28 am on Mothers’ Day morning. The Ogre is snoring heavily in bed with the dark curtains drawn over every inch of the windows. He was up until 4 am last night. He has piles of writing assessments to finish before a meeting on Tuesday, but instead of finishing them he spent hours soothing coughing toddlers, rocking a teething, congested baby, and cuddling a 7 year old with a nasty ear infection while I tried to sleep off a... Read more

My friend and Patheos colleague Sam Rocha has written a primer for philosophy and education. He asked me to read it before it came out and write a blurb for it, and I cheerfully agreed and opened the little book totally ignorant of the fact that Sam was about to punch me in the face and then give me a big hug. Here’s what I wrote about the book then: “Sam Rocha’s Primer is something I’ve literally never seen before.... Read more

I had to start prednisone yesterday for my asthma/bronchitis/surely-fatal-lung-affliction. Between the ragey, ravenous effects of the prednisone, the shakes from the nebulizer, the little cough medicine that couldn’t (but could give me stabbing stomach pains), Lincoln’s eternal sleep strike, and my general emotional instability, here’s how my 29th birthday went: At 2 am when Lincoln decided it was play time, I was like and the Ogre was like Then when the minions ran in at 6:30 and were like I... Read more