Cary's answer was hilarious and pointed out the perils of snap judgments. And some writers have pointed out the perils of not making judgments soon enough. Some writers have told the LW to stay the course, but the LW is clearly uncomfortable with her current heading, so that's not really helpful.

The answer lies in the middle, in moderation.

Perhaps the LW could be more picky about choosing her first dates, i.e., discard potential dates before she even meets them. And then be a little less picky about accepting second dates, giving time to let attraction grow.

Here's an easy way for your spouse and children to decide whether it's OK to disturb you: blood or fire.

Set the limits: I'm going to the guest room to write for an hour; do not disturb me for anything other than blood or fire.

When someone does disturb you, ask two questions: Is anyone bleeding? Is there a fire?

If both answers are No, tell the intruder to leave, and start writing again. It will take a few weeks, but they'll learn.

LW -- I am a mom, a wife, an editor, a business owner, and dozens of other labels I won't bother to list.

I have a few pieces of advice for you. The first is a common one -- you can't change other people, you can only change yourself. So ignore the "I am Mom" women -- you won't like them and they won't like you -- and concentrate on finding more like-minded friends -- without or without children.

Second, ease up. "What do you do?" is a standard ice-breaker in this country (and many others). It's shorthand for "let's see if we can find something in common to chat about."

Third, if you have children (not when, cause it's not an automatic process), figure out how to be the kind of mother you want to be. If you want time for yourself, even in the first few months/years, make sure you have the means to pay, and then find a good babysitter to watch your child while you go read, garden, work out, etc. It can be done if you make it happen.

Fourth, and this is personal, I'm writing this note sitting in the waiting room at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. My son was diagnosed with autism at age 3. He's in a research study here, and has spent two days being tested and will have two MRIs later today. For me, "I'm a mom" is the shortest possible answer I can give to people. "I'm the mom of a child with autism" is far more accurate -- and incredibly different -- from the first answer. So if you are blessed with a situation when you can say just "I'm a mom," I hope you are grateful.

There may be another factor here. Some years ago, there was an article in the New York Times Sunday magazine about men who didn't want to attend the births of their children or regreted having done so. They were turned off by the thought of or actually having seen their wives giving birth. One man in the article said something like "once her body was re-zoned from entertainment to industrial, it lost its appeal for me."

Perhaps the LW's husband had a similar reaction, combined with his depression, and the result is a complete lack of intimacy.

LW -- I think you know that your problem isn't a big one compared to others, and I think you knew you would get trashed when you wrote to Cary about it. So it must be bothering you to an extreme to have written at all.

You're letting a small problem expand in your mind to be a BIG problem precisely because you haven't done anything about it. So here's a plan of action, culled from Cary's answer and a few others:

1. Call a landscaping designer and get a plan together for a wall or fencing or plantings or all three. Get a start date for the project.

2. This will give you a great excuse to go meet your neighbors. Here's your script: Hi neighbors, We're Joe and Suzy LW, from next door. We're sorry we've never met before, but we hope you agree that now is better than never. We wanted to give you a heads up that we're having some extensive landscaping done. So for the next few months there will be machinery, noise, etc. Here's a bottle of wine to drink when the noise is making you crazy, and we'd love to have you over for cocktails when the project is finished.

3. Pop by every week or so during the construction process to make sure they are handling the intrusion well. Do not mention their son's basketball noise. You know in your heart that the activity is healthy, fine, and well-suited to where he lives.

4. Once the landscaping is finished, do indeed invite the neighbors over.

5. Wait a few weeks and see whether the landscaping has had the desired effect of muting the basketball noise.

6. If it hasn't, then you may go to the neighbors, with whom you will now have a relationship, and confess to them that the landscaping project was an attempt at drowning out the noise. Tell them it was somewhat successful, but you'd still really like to eat dinner from 7:00 - 7:30 without any background thumping, and would it be too much of an imposition to ask Junior to put away his ball at 7:00 each evening?

You will improve your home, improve your life (cause having a pleasant relationship with neighbors is always nice), and possibly even improve your neighborhood (neighborliness has a habit of spreading). And, best of all, you will have resolved -- either completely or at least partially -- your problem with the basketball noise.

Leave Salon right now and Google "landscaping" for your town, make some calls, get some appointments. Go. Right now.