As much as I love date night, pretty much everything in I Don’t Believe in Date Night at The Conversation describes how Rockford and I try to do things. Except that he really does hate to go to bed angry, so we try not to do that.

I’ve loved this man since we were kids. Ours is a relationship that our friends hold up as an example of happiness, equality, love, friendship… and most of the time, I understand why. And I can tell you, it’s not because of date nights. It’s because of regular nights. … It can be Monday, it can be meatloaf, we can be talking about the mortgage. But it’s always meaningful. And more importantly, it’s routine. We do it all the time.
via Laura at Hollywood Housewife

Jenn Mattern, just writing the lights out in How to Go to the Bank.

But Bank Guy is already making a beeline for his overstuffed chair. You are messy, too messy and middle-aged to remember. You have become that woman, somehow, in the span of a few short years. Your daughters are more vibrant and beautiful by the day, while you are grow heavier with doubt and fear and anxiety and all of the things you dare not say.

A lot of people I love dearly don’t share my political beliefs. I’m OK with that, mostly. There are some topics I just don’t discuss with them, though, because I feel very strongly about them and I don’t like arguing with the people I love and, frankly, I don’t want to know how they really and truly feel about some things because I don’t want it to affect my opinion of them.

I realize that’s rather cowardly of me.

I’m not planning to change my cowardly personal policy. But I am going to post some seriously liberal links today.
Continue reading Friday links! On politics, progress and parenting. →

1. It’s no secret that I love most everything that Jim at Sweet Juniper writes. This week especially, I love what he has to say about Tim Allen, Frankenmuth and going Up North in “Two Adults, Three Kids, a Dog, and a Lizard in a Station Wagon are driving down the highway.”
2. “A Miracle Inside the Aurora Shooting: One Victim’s Story” is an incredible, miraculous story. It’s worth reading.
3. I’m going to be recording the Olympics opening ceremony tonight so we can watch it tomorrow with Rockford and Poppy, who’ve both been traveling this week. I haven’t done a lot of reading up on the individual athletes, but after reading “Bronx native John Orozco an unlikely gymnastics star,” I’m really looking forward to seeing Orozco in action.
4. And finally, today was supposed to be the day for the July edition of the Daring Bakers Challenge. This month’s challenge was to make crackers, and I did make a batch of Italian Four-Cheese Crackers. But with all the traveling and the bronchitis and such, I never took pictures of my crackers and I never made another type of cracker, which the challenge required. A lot of other Daring Bakers did successfully complete the challenge, though. The “Not-So-Naked Crackers” at Korena in the Kitchen and the Pepper Jack and Oregano Crackers at Bourbonnatrix Bakes sound positively scrumptious.