Last night I realized that I am going to be in serious trouble when Jesse starts school on the 14th. We've let him have a pretty loose rope this summer, and we're all going to hang on it. He's been staying up waaaaay too late. I think I finally got him to bed at 10:30 last night, and he was still wide awake at 11 p.m. I know this because our loud-mouthed cat, Greely, was yowling, and I could hear Jesse yowling back at him from his bed. I'm going to have to start whipping him back into shape in a hurry.

A knee-jerk feminist reaction proves embarrassing: Mississippi Public Radio has a segment each morning called "Rural Voices." It's essentially recordings of kids reading essays they've written for class. Yesterday, I listened on my way to work as a little boy read an essay about his dad. He went on and on about how great and smart his dad is, and then he said that his dad was even patient with his mom when she forgot to bring him the glass of tea he'd requested. "Dad never gets angry at mom. He simply reminds her about the tea and then waits patiently for her to bring it to him." To which I responded aloud to myself: "Why doesn't he get off his ass, and get his own damn tea?" Then 10 seconds later: "My dad has cerebral palsy ..."

Oh. Oops. I guess he can't.