Yikes!

This is what happens when a print assignment bleeds into a vacation that spills into a busy social week and then morphs (I am running out of change-verbs) into another print assignment. Which I am just beginning, but regardless I am determined to write something here before August. This not included.

In bullet form:

1. I am alive.
2. I realize that the why-I’m-not-posting post is a cop-out, and I will deliver something better soon.
3. My article on Wind Turbine Syndrome just came out in the Summer 2009 issue of This magazine, and slightly off-topic, I also have an essay out now in the Summer 2009 issue of Brain, Child about the joys of single motherhood. The first will probably be online sometime in July, and I’ll link to it when it is; the second likely won’t be, so if you want to read it you’ll have to hunt it down.
4. I saw a coyote loping along Newtonbrook Creek last week. This made me very happy.
5. The microfrogs have dispersed, either because they’ve been eaten or because they’ve moved on to better, wetter digs.

In other news, unless your attention has been consumed by the twin calamities of Michael Jackson’s death and the impact of the city worker’s strike on our public trash bins, you have probably noticed that you are now being charged five cents for each plastic shopping bag you bring home. Might I point out, in the interests of accuracy, that a five-cent charge is not a ban on plastic bags, and if your modern lifestyle is dependent on plastic bags you are fully entitled to bring home as many as you like.

I’ve noticed a fair bit of hyperbole on what is, after all, a nearly insignificant charge on an item that most of us found clogging our kitchen cupboards until we sickened of them and tossed them. No one is forcing you to forego the plastic bags, so if you need some bin liners and can’t bring yourself to spring for the Glad version, quit your belly-aching and pony up the nickel, eh?

I’ve been bringing my own reusable bags around with me ever since I went on exchange to Germany at 17, which is precisely half my lifetime ago, and so speaking from experience: you will get used to it. A day will come when you hardly ever forget to bring them with you or leave them in the car, and when that day arrives I predict you will find that the ten cents charged for the two bags you actually have a use for is no big deal.