Of Dial-up speeds...and linking a bit

Oh how the shaped internet hurts me! Having foolishly gone over our limit (a rather generous 25G a month) after only TWO WEEKS !!! I am currently suffering through the shaped dial-up speed connection blues. O woe is me! My blog reading, forum surfing, and general net amusements are so painfully slow, that only yesterday I gave up and read a book instead! It is another week and a half before the "new" month starts! I dread to hear the reaction of Smash when the kids are back on Friday. No WOW for him next week, not at these speeds. Ok, now I am feeling super privileged to be whinging about my internet connection speed. (Still, it's annoying, hmphh).

I was going to post some photos from our garden, but can't bear the wait, so you'll have to wait until April 2nd for those ones! We planted out some new seedlings in the vege patch a couple of weeks ago, and they are doing great.

A few interesting links I've been reading lately (despite my snail pace interwebs):

- Womanist Musings on life in the Game of Life where (shock horror) you can marry someone of the same sex: The Game of Life and the Gay Agenda.

We all need to fear the massive “gay agenda,” even though everywhere we look heterosexuality is affirmed as good and normal. All of this whining and protesting about concern for the children really amounts to nothing more than a desire to preserve and promote undeserved heterosexual privilege.

My son is eight years old and we have been speaking about different kinds of families in terms that he could understand since he was three years old and first started asking questions about reproduction. I take great care to point out that not all families look like ours and he is not in the least bit damaged by the experience. He is well aware of the fact that sometimes two men marry, or that two women marry and he has come to see this as completely normal because his father and I are committed to raising a child that is not only aware of whatever privilege he may have in this life, but one who has a deep and abiding respect for all people.

- The Hoydens have an interesting post on CFS/ME and “faulty illness beliefs”: The incredible hubris of the psychiatro-patriarchal complex

- An astronaut blogs from space - how cool is that! Spacebook, and Sandra Magnus's blog post on night and day in space here. (via Hoydens).

- Arwyn at Raising My Boychick tackles Independence of the attachment parenting kind.

It seems to me, then, that The Man's and my sin in the eyes of "mainstream" culture is not failing to foster independence, but our refusal to force detachment -- what I sometimes call "pathological independence". It is our willingness and commitment to provide a safe base from which the Boychick may explore, and to which he always may return, that earns us ire and shaming clucks of the tongue.

Independence, no matter what popular culture says, cannot be created by forcing the chick out of the nest; that is only detachment, which teaches children they cannot trust those around them, and cuts off their rightful sense of interdependence. Real independence, which is entirely capable of coexistence with interdependence and thus dependence as well, is grown in to, at one's own pace, under one's own power, and comes from knowing that one is free to roam, free to leap, and yes, free to fall -- which children are so much more likely to risk when they know they have a soft space to land.

Read the rest at the link, her argument linking in patriarchy is a good one.