For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, tho' in another dress
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Not to be able to grow old is just as ridiculous as to be unable to outgrow childhood." Carl Jung.

The spring issue of Northwestern Mutual Life's magazine, Creative Living, contains an article by Sheryl Seyfert about last year's book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder by Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman. (Sorry, I wasn't able to find a link to the article.)

One of the benefits of unorganized time, according to the article, is that procrastination increases efficiency. Procrastinators don't waste much time working on things that turn out later not to be necessary or important. That's true; I've proven it many times. In fact, the author quotes Freedman as saying, "It's bad prioritizing to do things right away." I love it!

I'm proof that messy people usually know right where to find specific items. Abrahamson and Freedman, according to the article, say that when naturally messy people try to organize things they forget where they put them.

They bring up a big problem I have with professional organizers: the advice to get rid of anything you haven't used in a year. I hate to get rid of anything if I think I might ever need it. (And I'm miserable when I do need something I've gotten rid of.) The article quotes Abrahamson as saying, "If you did that, you'd wind up throwing out your fire extinguisher because you haven't had a fire in a year." Bravo!

The next book I hope to see is one about the superiority of night owls over early birds. We night owls have been made to feel inferior for far too long.

I don't want to beat this to death, but I've found another interesting article on the GI diet.

The Canadian Trial of Carbohydrates in Diabetes put people with Type 2 diabetes managed by diet alone on high-carbohydrate, high-glycemic-index (GI); high-carbohydrate, low-GI; or low-carbohydrate, high-monounsaturated-fat diets for a year.

The results: "Body weight and HbA_1c did not differ significantly between diets. Fasting glucose was higher (P = 0.041), but 2-h postload glucose was lower (P = 0.010) after 12 mo of the low-GI diet." [My emphasis.]

The researchers concluded long-term HbA_1c was not affected by altering the GI or the amount of carbohydrates. However, because of sustained reductions in postprandial glucose and C-reactive protein, a low-GI diet may be preferred for Type 2 diabetes. Does that mean they think it's better to have low blood sugar two hours after eating than fasting blood sugar in the normal range?

This doesn't seem to give much incentive to worry about the GI diet.

In the rare times when I've plowed through all the things I have to do—and when I've selfishly taken the time to do the things I really want to do, I still have a big pile of things I should do waiting for me. Sometimes I hate the "should's" even more than the "have to's."

The "should's" are by definition things I don't especially want to do. They are unpleasant or boring or stressful or difficult. Or I know they will take a long time. Or they require decisions. (The first decision is where to start: There are so many of them I don't know which to do first.)

"Should's" usually don't have deadlines, but, again by definition, there might be unpleasant consequences if I don't do them. Sometimes the only unpleasant consequence is I would consider myself a bad person if I didn't do what I thought I should do.

Some of the "should's" are here all the time. A few examples are exercising, filing, and trying new recipes. It's always easy to put those off.

My current "should's" range from having the oil changed in my car to writing letters to aunts. I took time to work in my yard this afternoon because I wanted to and saw a whole season's worth of things I should do out there this year. I'm running out of time to plant the vegetables, so soon that will change from a "should" to a "have to." I know many other gardening "should's" will be abandoned by the end of the season.

Tonight I should pay some bills and answer some family history correspondence. Mail won't go out until tomorrow, so that's a good excuse to put off the bills. Normally working on family history is something I want to do, but  responding to this correspondence is going to require some research and some work (figuring out how to create a file of just one branch of the family), so I've been putting it off. I'll be mad at myself if I don't get at least one of these "should's" done this evening if something comes up tomorrow that I have to do. That's how my "should" pile got as big as it is now.

I hate the "should's."

I've come across an article about the glycemic index that raises doubts for me after swearing by it for the last few years. Glycemic index (GI) is defined in the article as "a scale applied to foods based on how quickly the glucose in foods is absorbed into the blood stream, relative to pure glucose." The concept can be used to lose weight, according to the Glucose Revolution books, and it is incorporated into the South Beach Diet.

I've bought the book and cookbook by Jennie Brand-Miller et al. and tried to follow the concepts. I've avoided white potatoes and eaten sweet potatoes until I couldn't stand them any more. I've favored proteins, trying to choose low-fat ones. I've justified eating ice cream by claiming it has a low GI. I've pigged out on nuts.

This new article, however, implies that you can't count on the GI! It says testing at the at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University showed variations in GI values of 42 percent in individuals eating the same food at different times. It also showed a wide range of values among different individuals. (For purist readers, it was a small study with only 14 participants.)

I know the GI uses averages, but until now I had no idea how wide the range of values was. To me, it makes choosing foods based on the GI meaningless. I could be thinking I'm eating something with a low GI value when my blood sugar could be shooting up just because of who I am or when I eat.

The researchers, of course, plan to do more studies. However, this small study is enough to disillusion me. To tell the truth, I had already drifted away from the GI diet. In the past year and a half I have lost weight by following two general principles: eating the freshest/least processed food possible and eating less. Period. Following these principles, I have not worried about  whether individual foods are good or bad, low fat or high fat, protein or carb, low GI or high GI. As far as I'm concerned, this article gives me permission to throw my GI books out the window and keep doing what I'm doing.

I came across a feature in the April Sunset magazine called "Garden buzz: What's happening in gardens and what's not." To my surprise, it had two lists headed "in" and "out." "In" and "out" in a garden?

Yes. It says single-plant containers are in; overstuffed containers are out. Really. I've done both over the years depending on the plants. I'll keep doing it. Here's the only container I have so far, and I think it's pretty.

"Soothing spring greens" are in; "brassy orange with hot pink" is out. Darn. I guess that means brassy orange with hot pink used to be in, and I missed it. Oh, well.

Solar lighting is in; tiki torches are out. Huh.

Meditation spaces are in; wedding cake gazebos are out. OK—but I'd love to have both.

I'm drawn to English cottage garden style, so I've always thought of gardening as timeless—and fashionless. Do the Sunset editors really expect readers to rip out all their brassy oranges and hot pinks and replace them wtih spring greens this year regardless of their preferences? Or are they simply reporting that that's what their readers have already done? Whose tastes change that much that quickly?

I've always been interested in the wives of polygamists; I've wondered why they tolerate husbands who won't commit to being faithful while expecting them to. I liked the novel Watch for the Morning by Elisabeth MacDonald, which seems to give a historically accurate view. (The women in the book have mixed feelings about the practice but feel they have no choice about it.)

So of course I was interested when Texas officials recently entered a polygamist compound and removed all the women and children (later letting the women return). The whole country has been gawking at the photos of these women who seem to come from pioneer days. They all seem to be wearing long dresses sewn from two or three 150-year-old patterns. Definitely unusual.

But what I noticed immediately were the hairdos! Everyone else has been commenting on the hair styles, but they're strangely familiar to me. They are exactly like the hairdos of the women in the religion in which I was raised, "The Truth." "The Truth" does not and never has been involved in polygamy, but its standards for women's appearance are frozen in time like those of the Yearning for Zion compound. In fact, members of "The Truth" were called the "Black Stockings" at one time because until the 1940s all the women were required to wear them. The women don't wear makeup, and, like the FLDS (Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), they use the Bible quote about a woman's hair being her crowning glory as the reason for not letting women cut their hair (but for some reason requiring them to pin it up).

See what I mean: Here is an article (with a photo) about the polygamist compound hair and dress styles, and here is another article (with a photo) about Muriel Erickson, a minister in "The Truth." I went to Sunday morning meetings in  Muriel's parents' home when I was a girl.

I don't know where I'm going with this entry. I guess I just wanted to comment on learning that I have something in common with a group of people that until now has simply been a curiosity to me. Or at least I had something in common with them until I left home.

Everyone was thrilled when Dillard's came to town. It's supposedly the highest class store we've ever had in Reno.

That's why I was surprised when I was reading the paper this morning and saw muumuus in a Dillard's display ad. Didn't middle-aged women wear them around the house when we baby boomers were kids? Weren't they called "house dresses," too?

I can't believe a high class store like Dillard's is selling them now! But wait. They're not muumuus now. They're "patio dresses." If you don't believe me, go to dillards.com and search for "patio dress." Check out the high class prices, too.

Sorry—they still look like something you'd wear with slippers and curlers.

"The real cost of a thing is the amount of life which is required to be exchanged for it." Henry David Thoreau.

"The real price of every thing is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." Adam Smith. (I would add "storing it, moving it, and disposing of it.")

"It feels just as good to get rid of things as it does to acquire them." Laurel Busch.

Don't believe what you hear about credit tightening up.

In our mail yesterday was a letter from Sears containing a new Gold MasterCard for my father-in-law and one for my mother-in-law. They have a credit limit of more than $9,000, and the cards are good until 2011.

Phil's dad died in 1980, and his mom died in 2003. Sears used our address because we handled my mother-in-law's paperwork at the end of her life.

Since I've been doing Dad's paperwork, we've been receiving junk mail for Mom—who died in Southern Nevada in 1979. Most of the mail is from Sears.