My journalistic niche: the obvious

There's a ground-breaking essay in the Guardian about how, if you live in a city with good public transportation, perhaps a car-sharing service as well, you don't need to own a car. An essay which it's revealed that one of the main reasons for having one is that if you don't, other, richer kids will tell your kids that your family is poor. (Welcome to my not-poor but car-less New York childhood!) I mean, yes, if you're in a big, dense city (and I get that London's spread out a bit differently than New York), a car starts to become an inconvenience and not worth the bother. But living in a city with a reasonable subway system and patting yourself on the back for not owning a car is not unlike living in a tropical climate and congratulating yourself for not owning a fur coat. When I lived in New York (or, for that matter, Chicago), no car. Here in the woods, where there's no public transportation to vaguely near where I live, not even a bus... car, finally, and thank goodness.

In other ground-breaking news, today I made the miraculous discovery that a pair of new (all-cotton! yet non-mom!) jeans that fit just right apart from gaping in the back did not need to be taken in, but rather to go through the dryer for the first time. For the best, given that this was the most I'd spent on jeans by such a long shot, even before the shipping and hemming. Also for the best that I didn't get this done when I got them hemmed - and I had been regretting this - as I now wouldn't be able to close them.