I think that if women want to stay at home they should be able to make that choice without being told that they are setting back women’s rights. I saw that women on the Colbert Report and I couldn’t get behind her argument.

I didn’t grow up in the Tri but I have visited there many times. I would take Seattle over the Tri. Like Kerry said there are plenty of places to live in PNW that would provide the small town and would leave you close to your family as well.

I mean, making livable cities is going to be one of the great challenges of the new millennium. It’s no wonder people want to move to smaller, less…active cities, because they generate less stress.

Portland is dealing with much the same thing-although more proactively-and I sincerely hope we take steps to make the city livable for not only the future, but the wide economic class that’s coming here (and is already here)

But. I think that deciding to make sure that concern for the lowest, over concern for those that have-I’d hope this doesn’t change as we get older. I’d hope t his become more fierce in us, more pressing and important. Even as we become concerned with local events, and our own familes and communities, we become connected with a larger community, via the internet. We become more, compassionate. There’s plenty to go around, if we’re willing to take what we need, and share the rest.

And I’m drinking again. What is it about you that inspires me to drink?

When I was a kid, my parents clearly HATED Seattle. Whenever we were in town, they acted like it was this awful, scary place. If we went to a Seahawks game, it was straight to the Kingdome, then straight back to I-90. When I went to Western, moving to Seattle became like this ultimate Holy Grail-like object for me. Now that I’m falling into the “Seattle’s a great place to visit, but I don’t want to live there” camp, I worry that I’m becoming this frightened suburbanite.

As to your other points, I say word up. Also, thank you for the kind words, good sir.

1) There is no ‘right’ way to raise a child. Parents who love you are what matters the most. Parents who love you will make sacrifices (financial, emotional, spiritual, even physical) to make sure that their children are given the best place they can to grow up in.
[subset a] those parents will also, occasionally forsake the children for some time for themselves. They need to. You are not just a parent; you’re a human being with all the other things that come with that.

2) This said, I do think that, overall, it’s a good thing to have a parent at home for young children. Doesn’t matter which parent.

3) I think that the economic realities of the current world make #2 almost impossible. This breaks my black, light sucking heart.

4) Men, even men who dearly love and take interest in their children, are not given the credit they deserve, culturally. Nor the…decree of responsibility {doing the best I can here; drunk} that says that raising children is a good thing. You can/should sacrifice for that and that’s O.K. Instead, we’re kind of culturally…ignored. Treated as 2nd class [this is changing, but I think it's still true in a whole cloth sense] as parents, so when you take an interest, people seem surprised. But only because their dads didn’t take interest.

This, I think, also needs to change. You cannot make the world a different or better place by pissing off half the population.

5) What does being a Republican mean? Being sick of Seattle–you don’t really say what that means, so I don’t know how to speak to that.

6) here for balance (tribute: Fuzzy)

7) There is a weird, unexplainable backlash amonst women; Stay at home Mom’s seem to be downgraded, and I don’t understand why. To me, feminism is about being able to make choices. Not degrading someone for making choices you would not have made. A woman will be able to make better statements on this one-I just think it’s sad that such a backlash exists. Career, working women, are just as valuable as stay at home, or part time Moms. They all do a fuckton of work, and any valuable, interested, loving parent is doing, at the least, a 2nd job.

So why not respect that? (this, though, requires a cultural shift, where we actually prove that children, and good parents, matter. Money will be involved here, sadly)

Final aside. I saw how you and Amy were. You love Jack, and your actions toward him show it. Anyone who wants to judge you: Fuck those bitches.
Fuck ‘em.