OK, I'm just as guilty as the next suburbanite for having a pantry full of prepared, boxed, canned food. Mac and cheese, parmesan couscous, graham crackers, goldfish crackers, microwave popcorn, Doritos, granola bars, tomato soup concentrate. We have it all (and I'd be willing to bet most readers here have some variation of the above). Hate to admit it, but there it is. Just had my bowl of Grape Nuts this morning.

The truth is, of course we don't NEED those things. If I were more resourceful as a cook, or had more time, I'd cook from scratch, from real ingredients. But I don't, because those things are cheap, and my time is more valuable.

But if a $3.95 box of cornflakes has $0.05 worth of corn, and the rest is all processing, transportation, and packaging, (i.e. oil), I think in the future we'll be seeing a lot more people buying bags of flour and bricks of cheese, and a lot fewer people buying cheese flavored goldfish crackers. It will be supply and demand. Corn flakes (and their ilk), at the end of the day, are convenience luxury foods that we have come to see as staples. They're not. The corn itself is.

I crave quiet. I have two kids--the quiet one and the noisy one.

The noisy one is passionately social. He has the personality of a golden retriever puppy. He wants friends over 24/7. Would love to be out doing/being/playing all the time. I send him out on his bike, no one is there (whole 'nother discussion... all the kids are off in organized sports). So I have to put myself out and call parents I don't know and organize play dates for my outgoing social butterfly. But it's so much better for my son when I make the effort--otherwise the pent-up frustrated social energy in the house reaches a boiling point and it's awful for everyone. I've come to realize that my son NEEDS others and social stimulation in the same way that I NEED quiet. I cannot provide everything he needs.

If my son is a golden retriever puppy, I'm a middle-aged housecat. I like my people, in my space, but I'm not much for crowds and noise. Neither one is better or worse, right or wrong, just very different and sharing the same house.

My husband just won't make the calls at all, he's quiet too, and drained by his job, and I understand the desire not to have the house full of kids.

Sometimes it's not just the demands of being a parent that drains me, but of parenting a kid who has a very different personality from mine. I don't have much to offer other than I feel your pain. Don't listen to all those PITAs who say you shouldn't have had a kid. Not one of us knows what we're getting into when we make that leap.

But here it is happening now. People are riding transit more. That will in itself force more transit. As ridership increases, so do the routes, the freqency, and the convenience. The cry of "but the bus never comes" will disappear as the bus DOES come with more regularity, and there are more people on it.

People will demand safe pedestrian crossings when they NEED them to get to work, when being a pedestrian is part of life instead of part of the after-dinner dog walk. People will demand bike lanes when they need them, when biking becomes a mode of transit instead of a hobby.

Wow. This is cool. And I speak as an SUV owner (it's small, 8 years old, and paid for). My gas bills are through the roof but it's still less than a payment for a new car. I'm unfortunately stuck with this boat until its wheels fall off. Besides, you can't sell a used SUV now anyway.

I'm reminded of a dear friend who moved to the Netherlands. She had always been very heavy, and she lost 60 pounds in her first year living in the Netherlands. She didn't diet, she just lived like a Dutch person--walking, riding her bike, and only taking her car out on the weekends for drives in the country. Her car and her bike swapped places compared to life in the US. The bike was the practical necessity, the car was the weekend luxury she could have lived without.

We got a Wii Fit, and we picked up a copy of Wii Ski. Excellent games. I'm terrible at yoga, yes the damn machine also asked if I often trip when I'm walking. But nevermind. It's fun. I do not have room in my life for a yoga class. But doing yoga in the privacy of my living room with a device that can tell what I'm doing is pretty cool. And I don't have to feel like a dweeb in front of other people.

I'm not a gamer. But the Wii is fun. I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of the games in Wii Fit.