"The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again." - George Miller

After I wrote yesterday's post I heard a story on NPR about that whole "won't surpass your parents' standard of living" bit. I heard that...
If you were born in 1940 there was a 90% chance you'd surpass your parents, even if you had a financial setback, illness, or some other major life issue. The economy grew so rapidly during the 50's and 60's that you couldn't hardly get it wrong.
If you were born in 1980 (the latest year for which they have figures, which seems significant), there's only a 50% chance you'll do better than your parents.
The reporter explained that the standard of living metric was entirely financial, and measured income adjusted for inflation relative to the cost of living.

OK, I already said (last post) that I think that's bogus. Life is NOT about income, and methinks that income and quality of life can often come in inverse proportion. But listening to that story got me thinking: if I could wave a magic wand and improve the non-financial standard of living for U.S. families what would I choose to improve? If not bottom line, then what?

I think my #1 item would be marriage and family. I want to see the divorce rate plummet, the number of kids growing up in single parent households fall even further, and a more tightly knit family. That latter would be measured in terms of meals together, shared activities, less screen time....

What would you choose?

Here's my problem with Christmas music. OK, two problems:
Besides the fact that too much of it is inane sentimentality it's just plain horrible from a musical standpoint. That's predictable given the ratios of songs to performers.
There is a limited supply of Christmas songs and a nearly unlimited supply of performers trying to sell Christmas albums/CDs. For Artist X to do O Come All Ye Faithful in a way that doesn't sound like the innumerable other renditions of that carol he/she has to do things to that song that violate basic standards of decency. Add in all manor of "grace" notes, odd rhythms, octave jumps, and trills and there is absolutely no way Baby Jesus wouldn't blow out his diaper and spit up the last four feedings if forced to listen to it.
Seriously. Next time you hear a Christmas classic sacred or secular, performed by a contemporary artist notice how badly it's been abused with all manner of musical goo-gaw.
Makes me want to scream.

After yesterday's run where I bumped up the distance today's was one of those "just do it" runs. It was supposed to start raining until 10 am. but it held off until about 2 p.m. And then made up for lost time by POURING. That extra time meant I could make the teeter-totter for the goats and get a sizable pile of kindling cut and split. We've been running the wood stove all day during this cold snap, with one piece of wood burning very slowly and a new one added just before it's gone. So I only need kindling for that first fire in the morning.

Still waiting for a call from Marta about goats. She's going to call us to come see the birthings if they happen during the day, whether or not they produce bottle babies. So hopefully the absence of any call today means all three does will give birth tomorrow.