organization is the religion of the single parent.

I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.

Now, see, that's why you want Internet friends. You can find people just exactly like you. Screw your neighbors and your family, too messy...the trouble is, once you filter out everybody that doesn't agree with you, all that's left is maybe this one retired surfer guy living in Idaho.

Everything truly important is washable.

Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.

Mom is losing, no doubt, because our vegetables have come to lack two features of interest: nutrition and flavor. Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value. Breeding to increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability. Bizarre as it seems, we've accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: "Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self."

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.