Items of Note

Oh, people of the super information highway, I love you. Ask and you shall receive! (I don't mean that in a The Secret kind of way.) There are so many good stories of capable teenage mothers. See this post by Barbara Card Atkinson, for example. Or comments on Dawn Friedman's This Woman's Work, especially Lisa V's and Katerina's.

Although you can skip the first comment. This commenter believes that certain women shouldn't have children, although she's not suggesting anything extreme. Something reasonable, I imagine, like a conversation in which she approaches a poor and/or young woman. "Hi. Just wanted to let you know that I'd prefer you don't have any children. I'm not suggesting anything extreme, just, you know, that I don't think you should be allowed to be a mother. And you should listen to me because I THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN."

I'd like to be there for that conversation.
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Part of my financial quest was to learn about investing in the stock market. (The idea is you feel secure about your old-age cash flow, you'll be happier.) The whole deal made me nervous, living as we do in these post-Enron times.

I saw an article in the paper this morning about a study: The researchers found that there's a "strong correlation" between where CEOs live and how the stock of their companies do. "The bigger the CEO home, the worse the company's stock fares," says the AP article.

Quelle coinky-dink? Not so much. "Home purchases could be a ruse. If you are going to dump stock, you can buy a house to cover your tracks," finance professor David Yermack was quoted. The median price for a CEO's house is more than $2.7 million, with about 5600 square foot floor space.
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Every once in a while, I get into a mild tizzy about what important conversations we might have neglected to have with Caleb. We were lounging on the couch last week when a commercial about Drugs came on. "Have they talked to you about drugs at school?" I asked him.

"What are drugs?" he asked.

"Oh, we can talk about it some other time," I said, quickly putting the worms back in the can.

We had sort of a two line conversation about drugs later, but neither one of us seemed particularly interested. Then the other day he tells me, "You know, I thought drugs were a kind of furniture."

Sure you can sleep over--we have plenty of Drugs! Don't jump on Mama's and Daddy's Drugs! Young man, you sit on your Drugs until you can behave politely! I can see where he got the idea.