In response to my refusal to send him a photo of a girl's breasts that a friend had sent me, Kurt writes:

"you are no fun. we have been underway for 6mths, you should see what happens when boobs come on the TV. its like monkeys in a cage and you have a banana in your hand!"

I am a magazine whore.

I love getting lots of magazines and catalogs in the mail. Something about the shiny pages and the kitschy descriptions of the items for sale, like you absolutely cannot live without this cool kitchen whiz-bang that will really fall apart the first time you use it, totally appeals to me.

I have real problems recycling a magazine or catalog before I read it. With the magazine, I have this sense of "I paid for it, therefore I should not waste by money by not reading this issue." With catalogs, there may be something in them that I absolutely cannot live without!

Call me weird, but anyway.

Two of my favorite magazines are Health and Organic Style. Not that I live the organic lifestyle, but I do try to do a small part to help the environment. I recycle A LOT (my household trash is usually about a kitchen-sized bag per week, whereas my recycling is overflowing the bins), I take short showers, I don't let the water run, I drive a small fuel-efficient car, I try to minimize the chemicals I use in cleaning, and I try to open the windows in the house as much as the weather will allow.

But if you read health- and environmentally-conscious magazines, you quickly get the sense that EVERYTHING is bad for you. The furniture you're sitting on, the mattress you are sleeping on, the paint on your walls, the chemicals in your food, the chemicals that leach out of the plastic you store your food in, the fluoride in your water, just about everything in the world is harmful to you.

I think there's truth in all of the above. But for me, it's the fear mentality coming to the fore. OK, so the chemicals in our furniture and household paint and so on can really do a number on lab rats. But guess what? I'm NOT a lab rat. And the levels of contaminants that the scientists expose the rats to are over and above what I'm exposed to on a daily basis. I've read articles on studies that inform the reader that the risk of such-and-such is DOUBLED when you engage in this-and-that... but what they don't tend to emphasize is that the original risk is 1%, so now your risk has been doubled to 2%. Is that really something to be so frightened of?

And if we're to go through life worrying about the exposure we're getting from this, that, and the other, we'll be so busy worrying about everything that we won't have time to actually enjoy life!! By all means, use sunscreen when you go outside because we all know that UV rays cause cancer and wrinkles. By all means, switch to stainless steel cookware if you're concerned about the chemicals of Teflon leaching out into your food. By all means, use cloth diapers or organic cotton diapers for your child if you're worried about the chemicals used in in the absorbent gel in the mass-marketed disposable diapers.

But don't freak out about any of it!! Don't obsess!! Try to live as healthy a life as you can without letting it get in the way of living. Actually look for numbers when you see that something doubles or even triples your risk. If the original risk is 1%, don't fret about it. If it's 20%, then you can stress.

Let's just LIVE. Enjoy life. Laugh, giggle, have a great time.

Don't let FEAR run your life for you.

** Oh, and for anyone who's counting... EIGHT DAYS!!! ;o)