(no subject)

Art class: $140
Supplies for art class: $88
Worth every penny, because the teenager (whose art you can get a hint of at http://totemlycool.deviantart.com/ ) is excited about going to the class, which makes me happy.

(In other parenting news, I am evil. She didn't do her one chore last night when she was supposed to (and said she would), so I woke her at 8am or so to come down and do it. That's my new plan: kids who don't do their chore when they're awake get to be awakened and made to do it while grumpy. I am evil, but I am tired of being told something will be done and then awaking to find it not done.)

(no subject)

BIKES!

Y'all done good. This is what seven hundred dollars worth of community support looks like. Plus two priceless teenagers, of course.

(no subject)

A nice young woman who's got mixed feelings about abortion asked for thoughts, and this was mine:

I feel like the only body I should be making decisions about is my own, and that other people need to be free to make their own. I believe I would never choose an abortion for myself. And in fact, when I was raped, I made sure they did NOT give me a morning-after pill. But just because that's my choice for ME, that doesn't give me the right to make that choice for someone else, any more than I would tell someone else they should or should not go on a diet, get an organ transplant, or have a sex change. Their body, their choice. And it's the hardest decision some of them will ever make. I don't intend to make it harder.

In addition, even though I don't ever want to have an abortion myself, I will fight for it to remain safe, legal, and affordable, so that no more women will die in botched back-alley abortions. I don't think that having an abortion should be a death-penalty offense. Women DIE when abortion is illegal. That's just wrong.