My Dad has always been a conservative, but when I was young he told me to never vote a straight party ticket, to make up my own mind about each candidate. And now, after a steady diet of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly for the last several years, he tells me with pride that he votes a straight Republican ticket, and furthermore that that's the only way to vote if you're a decent person. I can't even ask what happened, because he honestly does not remember being any other way.

It never bothered me before that we voted for different candidates, but sometimes it really hurts to think that my father believes that it's okay to hate people like me because we don't vote the same way. I miss the guy who told me not to vote that straight ticket. I wish he'd come back.

And I don't mean the article. I'm amazed, amused, and disgusted at all the people who decided that the best antidote to what they saw as a whiney article was to write a letter to whine about it.

I didn't hate this article. I remember the first sex after my kid, many years ago, and at the time I felt very alone and very worried that things would never, ever be right again. But they were, and so was I. It's still not a bad thing to see that this is a common experience.

It also offers this message to the press: "It is time to stop relegating coverage to the 'Style' sections of newspapers and to stories that cover only the work/family conflicts of professional women ..

You're damn right it does. And it should start with Salon. Why does Salon put items like this in their equivalent of the Style section? Why isn't this "real" news?

If even progressive media outlets ghetto-ize news about family/work conflict as only being a women's issue and only of interest to women, why should anyone else take these issues seriously?

I'd put this down to a genuine cultural and regional difference. You have no idea what it's like to live in a really hot climate, do you?

Summers here, we can get 110 degree heat that lasts over 100 days. What you nice folks in New York call "summer," we call "a nice fall day." Crisp, even. Anything under 90 degrees isn't even hot. It hardly even makes the beer seem colder.

So we kind of consider, on those 90-110+ degree days, that air conditioning is not a luxury, and not optional. People die here from not having air conditioning in the summer. Please don't try to make us feel guilty about causing global warming. We're too busy trying to avoid heatstroke to hear you.

On the other hand, during what passes for winter here (usually well above freezing), we don't see heat as much of a necessity. I don't even know anyone who has what you all would call a "furnace." We don't need it. But I'd never think of trying to persuade you that there's anything wrong with turning on the heat during your nice, cold, snowy winters.

Salon would do better to talk to poster Jackie M., up on page 6 of the comments. She sounds much more interesting than Ms. Glembocki, and her story, just in her comment, aroused much more sympathy and compassion in me than the article she was commenting on.

Also, let me add to the small chorus of people mentioning that Anne Lamott did a much better and more entertaining job with this kind of material back when she wrote Operating Instructions. I miss when Salon published her stuff and the stuff from mothers who actually wrote as if they were thinking. Those were the days. Could we maybe try that whole thinking thing again?

Women do some illogical and stupid things, but if you think women have a corner on the stupid market, take a good close look at the crowd of guys at your average sports event. Seriously, guys, painting yourself in team colors to hang out half-nekkid in the cold to "support" a bunch of guys who could buy and sell your whole life in one afternoon?

I'll take Oprah any day.