Here's a tip for you -- if you have to call your wife to come pick you up from the bar, your best bet is to let her drive home too, especially if the kids are in the car. Or even halfway in the car. Dustin Purscell learned that (hopefully) the hard way recently. He's in jail, charged with two counts of child endangerment as well as a few other offenses.

He wanted a lift home after an evening drinking with his buddies, but when his wife Ashley arrived, she decided he was too drunk and too angry -- he couldn't find his lighter -- to ride with her and her two children. He apparently disagreed, jumped in the driver's seat, and started the car. Ashley tried to get her kids out of the vehicle, but was only able to extract her five-year-old daughter before Dustin took off. Her seven-year-old son was still in the car with his legs hanging out of the door.

Folks, I've got nothing against alcohol or even getting wasted once in a while, so long as you do it responsibly, but the first time someone pulled something like this would be the last. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to be around my kids, you need to put their welfare ahead of your own -- if you can't do that, you won't be getting near them. I certainly hope Mrs. Purscell feels the same way and dumps this guy like last week's trash.

Source

Once upon a time, families traveling with small children got to board first, to give them time to get their little ones settled in, put away their luggage, toys, and snacks, and do whatever else they needed to do, without blocking the rest of the passengers from getting on the plane. Instead of standing in the aisle getting angry at the parents, the other passengers could sit comfortably in the terminal, getting annoyed with the airline.

Not so anymore, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Southwest, American, Delta, and United have all dropped the practice, although you can still ask to board early on American and Delta; it's up to the gate attendants. The reason isn't corporate hatred of families; studies have shown that boarding everyone together -- including the little ones -- saves ten to twelve minutes, on average.

"If you're bringing on people who need assistance -- younger kids -- all at once, you potentially create a bottleneck on the front end, as opposed to randomly dispersing them based on where people are sitting in the aircraft," says Anthony Black, a spokesman for Delta. "The best process is to board the aircraft normally." I imagine, too, that parents move a little quicker when they feel the stares of other passengers beating down on them and saving time is clearly more important than saving a parent's sanity.

Source

I've never liked the smell of incense and actually find it rather discomforting. When I was in high school, however, a lot of kids I knew liked burning it -- quite possibly as a means to cover up certain other odors they didn't want noticed by their parental units. It turns out, though, that they may have been better off taking their chances on getting caught.

According to a new study, burning incense is linked to a "statistically significant higher risk of cancers of the upper respiratory tract." In fact, those who burned incense continuously during the day were eighty percent more likely to develop cancer in the respiratory tract. These findings remained even after taking other factors into consideration, such as tobacco use, diet, and alcohol intake.

"This association is consistent with a large number of studies identifying carcinogens in incense smoke," the researchers note, "and given the widespread and sometimes involuntary exposure to smoke from burning incense, these findings carry significant public health implications." I would say that if you've got a teen who likes to burn incense, you might want to let them know about this study.

Source

In California, the minimum age to get behind the wheel of a car is fifteen and a half, when you can get a learner's permit. There are, it seems, no such restrictions on flying a plane. That's why, even though he's got at least five years before he can learn to drive a car, Charlie Goldfarb is already learning how to fly a plane -- and actually doing it.

The boy has been taking lessons while staying with his father in Southern California for the summer. His mom, who lives in London, at first agreed to the lessons, but apparently didn't really get the whole picture. "She said, 'Are you crazy? You let him fly a plane? I thought it would be a flight simulator,'" said his father, Mark Goldfarb. "I was thinking of something interesting for him to do. He's got an aptitude for high science; he loves aircraft. ... I don't believe in parents who want to protect their kids from all risks."

Still, he won't be able to fly on his own for another six years, but something tells me that won't stop him from continuing to fly. His mom once he gets back home to England? That I'm not so sure about.

Source

It's a terrifying scenario, but given the ability, I think it would play out about the same for each of us. Wendy Nelson's ten-year-old daughter was playing at a local playground when a man tried to take her clothes off and abduct her. Mrs. Nelson was sitting on her steps while her daughter played with friends, but when she called for her daughter to come in, the girl came running home crying.

"She said, 'That man tried to take off my pants,'" Nelson said. The man also allegedly asked the girl to stay overnight at his house. Nelson went after the man and told him she was going to call the police; while she was walking away, the suspect attacked her with a knife, stabbing her twice in the neck. Nelson grabbed a piece of pipe and fought back. Her son, seventeen-year-old Brendon, came to help and was cut on the side of his head.

Mrs. Nelson managed to knock the man to the ground and, while her son took the man's knife, hit him twice in the head with the pipe. Police say the man will probably face charges after he gets out of the hospital. Nelson, too, may be charged, although that's not a consequence she worried about. "I don't really care because I did what I had to do," she said. I can definitely understand that and would have to say that if someone tried that with my daughter, chances are, they wouldn't get off so easily.

Source

It cost the school district over $300,000 in legal fees, sent teachers to sensitivity training, and trampled the constitutional rights of students, and yet, many in the Florida community of Ponce de Leon still support principal David Davis' "witch hunt" against gay students and those that supported them.

While he was principal of Ponce de Leon high school, one of Davis' seniors came to him to report that other students were taunting her for being a lesbian. She probably thought that Davis would do something about the situation. Well, he did, but not exactly what she had hoped. He told her that it was wrong to be a lesbian, told her parents about her sexual orientation, and began a "relentless crusade" against homosexuality. He asked students about their sexuality and told gay students to stay away from the other kids.

Source

Colorado librarian James LaRue has gotten another challenge to Uncle Bobby's Wedding, the book about a little girl guinea pig's concerns that her uncle won't play with her after he gets married. The idea is simple enough -- Young Chloe loves her uncle but worries that after he gets married, he won't have time to play with her any more. None of that is why parents are getting up set about the book.

The "problem" with the book is that it just so happens that Uncle Bobby is marrying his boyfriend Jamie. It's not really relevant to the plot, nor, as I understand it, is it gone into in detail, it's just sort of a part of the background of the story. Big deal. Apparently, to some, it is a big deal and that is cause to want the book removed from the library shelves. After the first challenge, LaRue wrote an intelligent, sensitive response that explained why, in spite of (or even perhaps because of) the reasons for the challenge, the book would remain on the shelves.

Well now a second challenge has come along, this time asking that the book be removed because gay marriage is illegal in Colorado. Once again, LaRue responds in an intelligent, polite manner -- something I'm not sure I would have been able to do. He points out that it is not specified where the story takes place, whether it is in Colorado, in Massachusetts (where the author hails from), or even "in a wholly fictitious universe with its own laws." Yeah, like one where guinea pigs talk and wear clothes and get married? Ya think?

Of course, if we were to follow that line of reasoning -- removing books that depicted illegal acts -- we'd have to get rid of the mysteries, the adventures, the newspapers and news magazines... heck, most of the library would be empty. We'd even have to pull the bible off the shelf because, last time I checked, murder and incest are still illegal most places.

Via Mombian

At sixty-one years old, she wasn't the world's oldest woman to give birth, but she was, apparently, the oldest surrogate mother in a country where surrogacy is banned by the Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the group that oversees such matters. The clinic where she gave birth refused to provide details such as the baby's gender or exact date of birth, but the clinic's spokeswoman, Chihiro Netsu, did say that "both surrogate mother and baby were fine."

As if her age weren't notable enough, it turns out that the surrogate mother is also the child's real grandmother. According to the clinic, they agreed to the procedure because the woman's daughter has no uterus. The grandmother was implanted with one of her daughter's fertilized eggs and, well, the rest is history, as they say.

I have to say that I was surprised to learn, when I did some research on this, that surrogacy is not universally accepted. There are even six states here in the US where it is illegal and four more where contracts for surrogacy are unenforceable. It seems to me that, for those who are otherwise unable to carry a baby to term, it is a perfectly acceptable path to parenthood. For this Japanese family, it sounds like it worked out famously.

Source

We almost always have dinner together with the whole family -- Rachel, Jared, Sara, Ezra, and I -- and plan to continue doing so as long as the kids are still living with us. That's the way my folks did it and I think there are definite benefits to sharing a meal together. Of course, there is the occasional exception, but for the most part, we all eat together.

Sometimes, however, that gets a mite tiresome. As much as I love my kids, sometimes I long for adult conversation. Rachel and I talk, but it seems that we invariably end up talking about the kids or other family matters. In addition, we've been together so long (nearly twenty years) and experienced so much together that we're comfortable just being together without talking.

Last night was different. I had dinner with another woman and the conversation was not about whether or not we would take them to the symphony this weekend or when we would get around to clearing out the attic. Instead, we talked of travel and of concerts and of youthful experiences. We laughed, we shared, we had a grand time. We barely even noticed that the kids were there.

Make sure your kids brush their teeth long enough with this simple trick