RIP, Michael

In honor of Michael Jackson's sudden death, I'm just going to post a link to a post of mine from last July: Thrilled.

Happy Father's Day, Mr. Robin

Robin's nest, originally uploaded by Alexandrialeigh.

So, I watched a squirrel leap onto the branch of a tree in my front yard yesterday, which is not remarkable, except for what happened afterward.

The squirrel leaped onto a dead branch. The branch broke and fell to the driveway, splintering into pieces. (The squirrel somehow managed to jump off the falling branch and land elsewhere on the tree. They are quite the acrobats.)

The dead branch happened to be the home of a family of robins, and I have been watching them over the past few weeks. The mama robin has been hanging out on the tree right in front of my window, so I've had a good view. Her nest fell to the ground, hitting the driveway upside-down.

I thought for sure any eggs in the nest were done for, but I ran outside to check, and was surprised to find the egg tucked into the nest so well that it hadn't even fallen out. It was still perfect and blue.

I gingerly picked up the nest, placed it back in the tree as high as I could reach (after I took this picture, of course), and scanned the yard for any eggs that had landed outside of the nest (didn't find any).

Hopefully Mama Robin will come back to her nest and take care of her egg once again.

Two years.

Don't trip, don't trip, originally uploaded by Alexandrialeigh.

I didn't really think our relationship would change much once we got married. We dated for so long before we got engaged; I thought this next step would mostly be a formality.

I was wrong.

Marriage has really strengthened things for us. It's permanent. It's comfortable. It's happy.

Marriage isn't for everyone, but I hope that someday everyone who wants to get married--gay, straight, black, white, orange, purple, whatever--will be able to do so, and be able to call it what it is.

New places to find me on the web

I've started blogging for a great natural, organic beauty company, Beautorium.com. (Seriously, they have great stuff; if you're a beauty product junkie like I am, you will not be disappointed.)

You can find the posts up every so often at Greenopia.com (and look! scroll down, and my little bio is up here), and if you want to subscribe to the RSS feed or make sure you don't miss a single post, you can find the Beautorium blog here.

Stop by and leave me comments! I live for comments.

Sweet emotion.

I got home this evening to find a box full of books waiting for me.

Books that just happen to have my name on the spine.

I feel a little distance from it, because Kristine and I finished it so long ago (and, well, because it's her story, not mine), but it just occurred to me that my mom might be able to walk into a library and find a book her daughter wrote on one of its shelves. If there was still such a thing as a card catalog, there would be a card with my name on it.

And that? That, people, is why I became a writer -- because I love telling people's stories, and also in order to give my mom some bragging rights.

You're welcome, Mom.

Babies having babies.*

Yesterday, Bristol Palin, daughter of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, went on The Today Show to talk about her new gig as an abstinence advocate for the Candie’s Foundation. The 18-year-old mother of a 4-month-old baby boy, Bristol told Matt Lauer that raising a baby is “hard work.” Then she went on to say that her son was “not a mistake at all.”

Bristol’s been criticized for speaking out – people think she’s just trying to drum up goodwill for her mother’s future political endeavors, or make teen pregnancy seem glamorous. I have no idea why she has decided to speak out, although I do genuinely believe that she wants to be a role model for her peers.

But honestly, I am curious why the foundation thinks Bristol sets a good example for an organization that aims to prevent teen pregnancy. Isn’t it quite a mixed message to see Bristol on TV, cuddling her (beautiful) baby boy, while telling them not to do what she did? It’s like she’s saying, “Hey, having a baby is hard, and it’s especially hard when you’re barely old enough to vote and you can’t legally rent a car, and you don’t have a high school diploma yet, but it’s wonderful, (especially if you come from a family that’s pretty well off by most people’s standards). But you still shouldn’t do it, because it’s wrong.” Since when does that kind of fuzzy logic work with teenagers?

Before you peg me as a bleeding-heart liberal (which, OK, I’m definitely not conservative), let me just say that I don’t think this is a partisan issue, either. Here’s something to back me up: Meghan McCain (an outspoken conservative and Republican party-supporter) blogged at The Daily Beast today about what she calls the GOP’s “unhealthy attitude about sex and desire.”

I think her point is a good one, and I happen to agree with I happen to agree with her thoughts on the effectiveness of abstinence-only education:

“Here’s what I’ve never understood about the party: its resistance to discussing better access to birth control. As a Republican, I am pro-life. But using birth control and having an abortion are not the same at all. Actually, the best way to prevent abortions is to educate people about birth control and make it widely and easily accessible. True: abstinence is the only way to fully prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. Still, the problem with abstinence-only education is that it does not make teenagers and young adults more knowledgeable about all the issues they face if or when they have sex—physically and emotionally.”

Educating youth about safe sex isn’t about being pro-choice or anti-choice. It’s about education. If a teenager isn’t going to choose abstinence (and, like it or not, whether or not to have sex is a choice pretty much all teenagers are going to make someday), then he or she should know about the different forms of birth control and have access to them. Because there are always, in my opinion, going to be teenagers that have sex. And if we want to keep them from becoming extremely youthful parents, we’re going to have to talk to them about it--honestly and openly--instead of assuming that abstinence-only education is going to work in every case.

Bristol herself is proof that it doesn’t.

*Cross-posted at Skirt.com.

3 Things I Think Of to Perk Myself Up When I'm Worried

1. Ian saying, "I like living in North Carolina." (That one sentence warms my cold, black heart more than I can express.)
2. Planning a trip to visit my baby sister in Pittsburgh.
   
3. Sunday mornings on the couch with my dogs while I gulp down coffee and only halfway pay attention to CBS Sunday Morning on TV.