Well, today I don’t have some magic cure for shrinking the mountain; but I do have a small tip to help keep future laundry a little more manageable. The three hamper system. Each room (at least those belonging to people old enough to do laundry) gets three hampers. Sounds like a lot, right? Sounds like a space hog. But it isn’t, if the three hampers nest. Stack the three hampers nested one in another in another, and use the top hamper as your laundry hamper. When it gets full, you separate the three hampers, and choose a color to wash. White? Ok. Put all the whites into one empty hamper and everything else into the other. Presto, you have a single load sorted and ready to wash, and the whole load gets put away in one room, so it is easier to put away as well. When you’re done, you have one hamper with your other clothes, one empty, and one just emptied when you washed. You nest them again, and they’re back to taking up the space of a single hamper.

Money and landfill space are certainly considerations, but in some ways these issues may be mere distractions from more important considerations. The cost to the earth and the cost to human life must be considered beyond the value of financial resource, because they are more important. The ecological questions must be addressed in far greater depth than the amount of land used, and the safety and health issues must me addressed in a meaningful way.

The land used argument sounds valid until you consider that even if less “land space” is used, it is the same amount of garbage being put into the earth.  And no matter how careful authorities are, some toxins will find their way into the dump. The less space a dump takes, the better. Two cubic yards are the same volume whether they are stacked or laid side by side.  And while they may not have the same effect financially, in terms of land cost, they have identical effect in the amount of earth harmed. Therefore, minimizing the amount of waste buried in landfills is important. It’s a red herring to bring in the amount of land purchased and used. That is not a measure of volume of earth tainted, it is only a financial gauge.

More important, though, is the impact of mining. This point has rarely been addressed in the question of recycling, and I believe it should be. Mining hurts, and kills, people, and the more metals we throw into landfills, the more we later need to have mined. Even as I type this Chilean miners in a recent disaster are awaiting rescue. A few months ago, 29 miners were killed in a collapse in West Virginia. Almost every year stories hit the news about accidents killing and endangering miners. Recycling is a far safer job than mining. I would far rather create recycling jobs than mining jobs, even if it is more expensive.

Ecologically, too, mining pays a dear and irreversible cost. The more we use the resources that are easily available and dispose of them, the more need to be mined. And the more we deplete those resources, the more “innovative” the mining techniques need to become. By innovative, I mean that mining companies need to resort to ever more ecologically invasive methods. They harm the earth, and they often kill communities economically and destroy the lands on which people live. Often the victims are among the poorest people on earth, and then what little they have is destroyed when they no longer have drinking water or a clean place for their children to play. When we say that it costs less to dump than to recycle, we need to ask the question: costs whom less?

I realize I’m responding to a 15 year old article; yet my own community only just adopted a widespread recycling program this summer. It really is taking us this long to take action, and every month we wait is another month that raw goods need to be mined instead of recycled.  This isn’t just about money, and it isn’t just about politics. It is about those who suffer as a result of the inconvenience of separating cans from garbage.

What I ask of you as you read this is one thing: do not look to the hypocrites who yell “save the earth” while running up $1000 a month electric bills. Do not look at the earth as belonging to one political party. Do not view recycling as something extremists are trying to push down your throat. Instead, just take a moment to think about those who have seen their communities destroyed, or their fathers lost, to mining. If you reject all other environmental efforts because the messengers sometimes offend, please do not reject recycling your cans.

1. Are you willing to pay $700 for a $300 vacation?
2. Do you feel good about being beholden to people who despise you, over a long period of time?
3. Do you feel that it’s right and fair that accounts get sold to people you never contracted to do business with?
4. Are 8 AM threatening calls exciting to you?
5. Would you rather have a $100 mp3 player now instead of a $400 iPod in six months?
6. Do you have trouble staying awake to worry in the middle of the night?
7. Do you relish the thought of living month to month and shifting money from account to account to survive?
8. Do you think having a savings or an emergency fund is for wusses?
9. Does stress give you a rush?
10. Are cheap gadgets and meals out more important than your kids’ college education?

If you answered yes to more than half of these questions, congratulations! You are truly cut out for a life of living on the edge with credit cards.

And while we’re at it, “dee doop” is not another way of saying “thank you”. “Mdup” does not mean “milk,” and even if you said “soda” instead of “dodup” I probably wouldn’t give you any.

You’re cute, kid. Very cute. But I gotta say, you’d still be cute if you learned to talk in real words.

I bought the book because its title was clever, but also because it echoed what I keep saying: Is it hot in here? Or is it me? Subtitled The Complete Guide to Menopause, it seemed like the right book to have in my house. I promptly put it neatly in a bookcase and forgot about it. That is, until today. After a crazy 6-week cycle and wondering if I was pregnant, to be followed by a surprise visit from Aunt Flo and a hot flash that nearly had me passing out at Wal-Mart, the book caught my eye this afternoon, and it was time to start reading it.

I’m not very far into it, but I like what I’m seeing so far. The authors say, in the introduction, “We went to our local bookstores looking for a guide to this confusing new phase of our lives, but everything we scanned seemed to be either about one woman’s experience or a testament to one expert’s opinion. We wanted a balanced, scientific, and comprehensive view, the menopausal equivalent of What to Expect when You’re Expecting.” When I read this, I was hooked. Suddenly I remembered the last book I’d picked up on the subject, and why I had put it back down. Most of it focused on two points: “Menopause is a healthy phase, so take your hormones and get on with it!” and “You should just be happy that your kids have moved out and now you can start a new career.”

Well, I’m not necessarily convinced about the hormones, and my youngest child is 2 years old; so neither of these points really hit home with me. That author, who did have reasonable qualifications, was writing about a “universal” experience by using her own preconceived notions as the sole anecdotal directive. I am not 50, I am 43. I do not have 2.2 kids, I have 8. I am both an old mother and a young mother, and I needed something a bit more inclusive if it was going to be relevant to me. I wanted less advice about hormones and careers, and more solid information about what to expect when I’m expecting hot flashes.

I can’t tell you a whole lot about this book at this point, but I am glad that the authors are seeking to do something differently from the book that I tried to read before. And I am always glad when one more book on the subject is written, because it is today’s dark subject. There was a time when mothers were reluctant to tell their daughters about s-e-x. It was too uncomfortable a topic, I guess. Now, people treat menopause that way. Mothers who didn’t go through it the traditional way (maybe they had a hysterectomy or some medical condition) are hard pressed to tell their daughters what to expect. Some daughters don’t have access to their mothers, and don’t have older sisters to ask. And some just never get around to the conversation. It’s still too uncomfortable. But we need to talk. We women deserve to know what is happening to us, and what is going to happen, and how long it might take.

We have questions! How do we tell the difference symptomatically between a perimenopausal missed cycle and a missed cycle due to pregnancy? What are the odds of becoming pregnant at this time in our lives? Are there tests that can tell us where in this process we are? And so on.

There are also personal questions we should be asking. If we have mothers or older sisters available, we need to learn to be less shy about it. Your assignment, ladies, is this. If you have already been through it, please talk to your daughters or granddaughters about it. Tell them what it was like, and don’t be afraid to answer messy questions. Information from a relative may be more helpful than information from a stranger, because some patterns are genetic. If you haven’t been through it, ask. You will go through it, so be prepared with information ahead of time.

Women need to get over their fear of discussing these “private things.” It happens to 50% of the population… how private can it be? We need to know that, like pregnancy, breast cancer, and s-e-x, this is something we have a right to know about.

Notezilla has a lot of other features, but the pin to window feature is my favorite. For a complete list, I suggest you click on the link above and check it out. If you want sticky notes on your computer, Notezilla may be exactly what you didn’t even realize you were looking for.

Anyone who would make the first statement is behaving like an asshole. Anyone who would make the second statement is being closed-minded.

I want to tell you something, and if you are an elitist, I hope you will listen. Elitism is not intelligence. Narcissism is not intelligence. Closed-mindedness is not intelligence.  And neither liberalism NOR conservatism precludes any of those traits. They are not intelligence, they are character flaws. And if you think that people on your side of the fence are incapable of being elitist, narcissistic, or closed-minded, it is probably a sign that you are all of the above.

Nobody is stupid because they are conservative or liberal. But anyone who thinks that ego equals intelligence is being stupid. And anyone who thinks that anyone who is different from them is closed-minded is closed-minded. If open-mindedness is important to them, they should rethink their positions about judging other people.

The salad:

1 head of lettuce
1 package maifon noodles
1 chicken, cooked
green onions

The dressing:

4 T sugar
2 t salt
1 t msg
1/2 t pepper
4 T vinegar
1/4 cup salad oil

Boil noodles for a couple of minutes. Drain. Mix with other ingredients and dressing.

notes: tonight we are adding horseradish and peanuts. Yum! Also, we are going to use sesame oil for at least part of the salad oil.  And of course, we have to double it.

And then you can tackle Shakespeare, C. S. Lewis’ non-fiction, and Charlotte’s Web. The book, not the movie.

The point to all this? Never stop learning. You learned in elementary school because they told you to. You learned in high school because you dreaded the loss of college and the pains of restriction. You learned in college because, by gum, you’d paid for it.

And now it’s a warm Saturday and you have the evening to watch tv. Go learn something for you, instead. Not for a teacher, a parent, a job, a promotion, or a degree. Just for the sheer joy of learning. You ate your brussels sprouts. Now go take a bite of chocolate cream pie. Learning for joy is a pleasure you won’t want to give up.

There is also a young character, one of the grandkids, named Max. He has Asperger’s Syndrome.

From the time his parents learned of his condition, I was at least a little concerned about how they treated the knowledge. The mother was devastated. Her perfect son wasn’t perfect, and he never would be. The dad was pragmatic, ready to deal with the problem. The aunts and uncles were pitying and sympathetic. Those poor parents, having such a terrible woe to befall their family.

The only problem with it all is that Apsergers is not a sentence. It is a difference. And difference is not necessarily a bad thing. They were heartbroken when they learned that their son would not be cured. I will tell you right now I am grateful that my son will never be “cured.” I like him exactly the way he is. But tonight’s episode was dedicated to Autism Speaks, an organization that exists to try to eradicate the thinking differences we call “Autism Spectrum Disorders.”

I’ll tell you something else. In a world without Aspies, we’d have precious few engineers, software developers, and mathematicians. Albert Einstein was probably one. There’s a good possibility that Edison was, too. Who you are is a gift to the world. People who are different from you are also a gift to the world. They don’t need “cured” just because they are different. They may need special help to learn to adjust to a world that isn’t like them, but that’s a far cry from needing to have their uniqueness taken away and replaced by more mundane gifts.

If we really must “cure” all differences, maybe we should go back to taping the hands of the left-handed, or go back segregation? Maybe we should re-ignite a search for a master race, even?

Or maybe, just maybe, those of us who are “normal,” “typical,” or “standard” need to learn to recognize the gifts in those who are different from ourselves. If we deprive ourselves of the gifts they have to offer, then maybe it’s the “normal” who are foolish and broken.

If you watched this program and are also bothered by it, please consider writing a letter to NBC to let them know that just because Autism Speaks is a squeaky wheel does not mean they are right.