What is up with all the typos I'm seeing in books these days? Does no one proofread these things before they go to press? I'm not a grammarian, but three books lately have contained errors so egregious that they interrupted my reading! Babyville by Jane Green and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult both contained an instance where the wrong character name was used. In each case, a pronoun was used for one character in a two-character scene and where the name of the other character should have been, the character referenced by the pronoun was named. For example, "She told Julia that her plan was...." in which "She" referred to Julia and the other character's name should have been in place of Julia in that sentence. And American Spy by E. Howard Hunt proved my mother right on the subject of spell-check. When spell-check first came out, my mother dismissed it as worthless because it could only tell whether or not a word was spelled correctly, not whether or not it was the right word for the sentence. In American Spy, some folks are described as "making due" and later he refers to the "power behind the thrown". Two words that wouldn't be caught by spell check because they are spelled correctly, but are the homonyms for the words he actually means, "do" and "throne", respectively. Witnessing this sorry state of American publishing makes me sad, for my mother should never be proved right about anything.

Jumping into the fray

So about a year ago, when I first started thinking about writing a blog, there was a big debate on some blogs I read about living together versus marriage. And I thought about starting a blog and jumping right into the debate. So here I am! What? It's still a hot topic somewhere.

One of the main points argued in the debate was that couples who live together are not as committed as married couples. And for some folks I'm sure that's true. But it's equally true of some couples who get married. If it wasn't, our country's divorce rate would not be over 50 percent. So that's a false argument. Then of course some people argued that it was against God's will to live together and not be married. At which point, the debate turned in to a free-for-all insult fest.

So here are my thoughts on the subject: Do what you believe is right. If you are a religious person and believe that God wants you to marry, then marry. If you are not a religious person and believe that you and your partner are perfectly happy the way you are and don't need to change a thing, then don't. My opinion is that each couple needs to figure out what works best for them.

My personal experience is that either situation can be a stable and fulfilling relationship. R and I lived together for five years before we got married. S was three and I was pregnant with W when we finally got married. We've been married for almost a year now and virtually nothing has changed. I changed my name and could add him to my health insurance, but that's really it. I don't love him any more or less than the day I moved in with him.

*tap tap tap*

Is this thing on?

Um, hi.

So I'll open this blog with a bumper sticker I saw on a truck the other day and a story about my daughter.

The bumper sticker said: Cowboys think 8 seconds is a great ride!
My first thought? "Remind me not to date cowboys!"

On Sunday, my daughter S went to visit her grandparents around noon. When she came home at 8pm, she sat down beside me and announced, "I was in such a hurry to go to Mimi's today that I forgot to put on panties!"

So that's my world. My four year old runs around with no undies and I talk to myself in the car. Welcome to my blog!