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The other day I was reading an article entitled, “How to Get a Better Night’s Sleep”. Since I have no sleep problems, I have no idea why I was reading this except that I tend to read whatever print I chance upon, the chronic reader syndrome.

I got as far as the fourth recommendation for good sleep. It admonished, “Do not allow your pets to sleep in your bed.” I immediately laughed and stopped reading.

I sleep every night with three guys, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. My first guy is Guy, our oldest, gentlest and sweetest cat. Many years ago, we heard a car pull up in our driveway. By the time we got to the door, the car was gone, but a lovely, gray cat was at our doorstep. We let him in and immediately knew he was a treasure, a perfect gentleman and a perfect bed cat in every way.

Stripe is my second bedfellow. He was a feral cat who roamed around our house for several years, stopping off almost daily to eat in our garage and sleeping in on bitterly cold nights. He would not let me get close to him, but I patiently tried to narrow the gap between us. And then one day, he let me get close enough to pat his head. He decided on the spot that being petted was an incredibly wonderful sensation and began leaning into my hand asking for more.

I subsequently made a deal with Stripe. If he would give up his adventurous, wild and free life, I would give him all the petting he wanted. Stripe began his indoor life and I had an overwhelming sense of relief. I would no longer have to worry about this beautiful boy being hit by a car or being eaten by a predator.

Stripe’s a live wire, always wanting to be behind the other side of any door he is behind. Stripe sleeps beside me but frequently wakes up to be petted or make sure that dawn will arrive on time.

My third guy is, of course, my husband. He is blessed with the amazing gift of falling asleep instantly and getting back to sleep immediately if something (perhaps a cat) interrupts his sleep.

In my opinion, the sleep article was nonsense. A good night’s sleep is possible while sharing your bed with pets. But one problem does arise. Whenever I am in a hotel room, I wake up frequently during the night, feeling around for something that is missing…something warm, furry and comforting.

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My son and I have come to the same, sad conclusion. Restaurant prices have become outrageous.

Dining out is one of life’s great pleasures, and like so many other things, it has become only for the financially endowed, those folks who never have to look at the price. Moderately priced, full service, ambient restaurants are a rare breed these days, and we treasure the ones that have managed to survive.

I learned to appreciate restaurants at an early age. My parents both loved eating out, and I was not consigned to a babysitter. Every Saturday night of my childhood was spent at the La Joy Chinese restaurant in Milwaukee. I loved the dimly lighted decor with dragons, scrolls and latticework. I loved the chicken and shrimp chow mein. I hated to even look at the egg foo young my father ordered every time and still think it’s a disgusting puddle of ugliness.

My mother finally rebelled at all that Chinese food and wanted a more varied menu. I must have been the luckiest kid ever because they switched to a gorgeous restaurant, the Boulevard Inn, for almost every Saturday night of my teen years. With large picture windows overlooking a park, crisp, snowy white linens, soft lights and flowers, this restaurant was the epitome of elegance. And my very middle-class family could afford to do this weekly.

These fabulous restaurants still exist, but my husband and I will not be frequenting them. It’s not much of an overstatement to say that America’s current restaurant scene consists of cheap, unhealthy fast food prepared by teenagers or healthy, fresh food prepared by trained chefs. Hang on to your wallet if the restaurant proclaims itself to be “farm to table”. Those will be the most expensive carrots you will ever eat.

The other day I did a computer search for a reasonably priced Italian restaurant in Minneapolis. When I read the following item and price on one menu, I knew that restaurant prices have gone berserk.

Listed as a “starter” salad to your entree:

Wedge Salad

Iceberg lettuce, tomato, red onion, cucumber, blue cheese dressing, bacon lardons… $15.95

I fully understand that my dinner price must include money for the building, equipment, energy, taxes and decor. I also know that with a tip of over 20%, I am paying a huge piece of the employees’ wages. But a $16.00 iceberg lettuce chunk still seems unjustified.

As we were eating our Saturday night dinner at home last week, my husband and I were discussing the super inflated restaurant prices and out of curiosity decided to calculate the cost of our entire dinner including the glass of wine and beer. It came to just under $10.00 for everything on the table. Since a meatless pasta entree, salad and wine for two plus a tip at the “iceberg” restaurant would be over $100.00, I think some outrage is justified. It’s enough to make you lose your appetite.

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Watch out for them. They’re coming soon to a grocery store near you, and they’ll be hot…hot pink, that is. A rose shade of pink is the newest thing in pineapples.

Novelty is always a good thing for the bottom line, and the folks at Del Monte came up with the idea of turning pineapples pink. They’ve been working on this color makeover in Costa Rica since 2005.

Turning a yellow pineapple into a pink one is done by changing an enzyme that controls the color of the fruit. Here’s a description from the F.D.A. on how the growers accomplished this feat. “The new pineapple has been genetically engineered to produce lower levels of enzymes that convert the lycopene to the yellow pigment beta carotene. Lycopene is the pigment that makes tomatoes red and watermelons pink, so it is commonly and safely consumed.” Both lycopene and beta carotene occur naturally in pineapples.

With the F.D.A’s seal of approval, the pink pineapples arrived on the market in 2017. Since almost all the produce we eat in America is hybridized in one way or another, I’m not afraid of a pink pineapple. (After all, no mad scientist has put octopus genes in them or something bizarre like that.) Nevertheless, I will not be eating any of Del Monte’s trademarked Pinkglow pineapples. They’re selling for an incredible $30 each, and you don’t even get the leaves or crown of the pineapple. Del Monte farmers chop it off to replant and produce the next lucrative crop.

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I started buying my clothes in thrift stores when I was an art student in college. With the exception of us students and bohemian types ( I was both – my Grandfather was from Bohemia) thrift stores were not frequented by the middle class. To use a phrase from that era, they were for “the down and out”. Hand-me-downs were a stigma then, not recycled treasures.

Thrift shopping might not have been popular, but I instantly knew it was for me. Simultaneously loving fashion and design and being nearly broke, I loved shopping someplace where everything was possible. Plus, thrift shopping is nothing more than a giant treasure hunt, and my design classes were training my visual awareness. Why not put that knowledge to practical use?

Another reason to be a thrift store shopper presented itself when I was a young married woman. Whenever I visited my parent’s house and wore a different outfit, my mother would immediately ask, “Is that new?” I doubt that she meant to induce guilt, but that was the effect. My parents both lived through the Great Depression and considered buying lots of clothes or anything else as frivolous…money’s main purpose was to be saved. I didn’t have to feel like a hedonist when wearing “new” clothes from St. Vinnies.

Many decades have gone by, I still love fashion, I’m no longer broke and I have come to understand that most women my age from early on were conditioned to feel guilty for loads of stuff we do or don’t do.

Covid put an end to thrift shopping for a year and a half, and I did miss treasure hunting for bargains. However, two realizations hit me. First, I have enough clothes to last me forever, and second, I could up my game when the thrift stores reopened. Since I need nothing but the fun of the search, I could shop almost exclusively off the $1.00 or $1.50 sale racks. And I will not feel guilty for an occasional splurge of a dollar or two more.

I am well aware that thrift shopping is not for everyone. My husband, for example, always opts for taking a 20 minute catnap in the car as I am happily scanning the racks in a Goodwill or Vinnies. He does, however, appreciate the $1.00 designer shirts I find for him.

And, finally, I must note that many young women in my granddaughter’s generation have embraced thrift shopping. I see them in the aisles of every store I visit. And they are laughing, happy and having fun with their friends. No guilt or stigma in sight…some things do change for the better.

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This post is going to be dirty. Memorial Day is coming up and many of us will be digging in the dirt, planting all the seeds and pots we’ve optimistically hauled home from garden centers. So it’s the perfect time to pose the question: What is the difference between soil and dirt?

I did some digging and unearthed these definitions:

Soil is alive, dirt is dead.

Dirt is different from soil. It is a dry and dull sibling of soil which can’t host life in any form without external help. It is rocky, silty and barren of any nutrients that healthy plants need to grow. If you add water to a handful of boring old dirt, it will not compact well, if at all.

You get the idea. Soil is busy stuff. It’s made up of “organized ecosystems of microscopic organisms and insects that exchange nutrients and minerals through food webs and decomposition.” Dirt, on the other hand, just lies around.

We have never had our soil (or whatever is covering the top of our acre and a third ) tested. My husband and I decided that nature took care of our land long before we arrived, and we would only add native species to the mix. For the most part this strategy has been a success. However, it might also account for the fact that we can’t grow even a tomato or potato in the tiny garden behind our deck.

I do want to give dirt equal time here, so I’ll end with this terrific dirt story passed on by a friend. Years ago, when most homes were heated with coal furnaces, walls got dirty from soot. Kutol Products in Cincinnati made a fortune by developing a putty-like wallpaper cleaner to get rid of the dirt. However, by the 1950s, coal furnaces were being replaced and the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. A sister-in-law of one of the company executives was a nursery school teacher. She tested the non-toxic wallpaper cleaner as a modeling “clay” for children and suggested a name for it.

And that’s the dirt on Play-Doh.

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