Things I did other places

Happy Friday! Here's a quick roundup of places I've been on the Internetz this week.

Over at VillageQ, I wrote about my right to be a mediocre queer parent:

If anything, I sometimes feel as though I need to defend my right to be a mediocre parent, especially in the wake of all the studies that keep cropping up about how, in fact, kids from two-mom families tend to do better than those raised by one mom and one dad. My queerspawn, apparently, are supposed to be more confident, open-minded, and affectionate, and less aggressive and susceptible to anxiety and depression.

Which means that if they don’t excel, I will have failed doubly.

At Today'sParent.com, I wrote about the hidden value of childhood friends:

When we bought the house, we had no idea that the family down the street would bring so much value to our lives — just as my parents had no idea, back in January of 1971, how much the Pattersons would add to theirs. (For the record, we’re all still friends — Sheila and I and our families met up at her parent’s place a couple of years ago and I peeked over the (now much higher) fence to have a look at my once-enormous backyard, which now seems so much smaller.) When we look at houses, we look for things like bathrooms and granite countertops, but maybe we also need to look outside the house to see who lives on the street or down the back lane — because a family with kids your own kids’ age? That’s pretty priceless.

And I'm happy to be in some great company in this article, on "10 Canadian and American bloggers to discover" (en francais), by Maude Goyer, or Maman 24/7 over at Yahoo! Etre.

Happy reading, and wish me luck in the camping wilderness next week. Yes, really.