hi!  my name is christina, and this is my first attempt at a webpage.

i live about one hour northeast of atlanta, georgia, with my husband, dustin, and our son, séan.  we also have two cats.  our marriage is a polyamorous one, though we haven't have time for extracurricular activities since our son was born in november 2004.  i am black, and dustin is white.

for all practical purposes, our household is a non-theistic one, though we unabashedly and enthusiatically give gifts at christmas, eat easter dinner with dustin's family, and celebrate halloween.  more specifically, dustin is more of a weak atheist than anything else, while i lean more towards naturalistic pantheism.  my beliefs don't hamper my love of learning about religions, though.

politically, i vote libertarian whenever i can, while keeping in mind that the republican party started out as a third party in the 1800s.  i suppose you could call me an optimist.  i'm a bra-burning feminist (but not my good nursing bra, please!), and am unapologetically pro-choice.  i'm theoretically in favor of the death penalty, but don't believe that capital punishment, as it's currently practiced, is fair or practical and so should be stopped.  i believe most drugs should be decriminalized and so should prostitution.

i love to read and research, and that has informed many of our decisions in running our household:

• i use the sympto-thermal method for birth control.
• séan was born at home, with just dustin in attendance.
• i'm still nursing séan 17 months later.
• séan was not circumcised and, to date, has not been vaccinated.  a few, selected vaccinations are on the horizon, though.
• we use cloth diapers and elimination communication.
• we co-sleep, and do not spank.  the next time we move, we will set up a separate kid-bedroom, but will make the transition to it as child-led as possible.  not spanking will be a challenge, because dustin and i both grew up in hitting households, but we are committed to non-violent discipline.
• séan, and future children (our current target is three), will be homeschooled.
• we are omnivores, and subscribe to the weston price school of thought in food preparation.  we haven't experienced the astounding gains in good health that i've read about, but i do enjoy cooking and feel good about the more thoughtful and deliberate methods of cooking that price espouses.
• one day, i will try my hand at micro-farming.

some people would say that i read too much.  oh, well.  currently, i'm slowly working my way through the sivananda companion to yoga after a much-too-long hiatus following séan's birth.  i'm also reading a bound version of john taylor gatto's underground history of american education.

i have a horror of poor grammar and spelling that's equal to the horror i have of using capital letters in informal writing on the internet.  i keep a livejournal which chronicles more of what i do, as opposed to this webpage, which will chronicle more of what i think.  and lastly, you can email me here.