the bite-size snack

How wonderful it is to be able to eat bite-sized cookies! Crumbs no longer cascade down when I take a bite. It makes snacking so much easier, quicker, and more convenient. As a stubborn non-nibbler, being able to toss an entire cookie (or if I'm particularly voracious, a few entire cookies) into my mouth makes the experience infinitely more satisfying. Extra big, chewy cookies are fun when you're a kid, but the bite-sized variety makes snacking a sophistocated grown-up activity. And sneaking handfuls from your desk draw at work, or eating a few inbetween classes is made so much easier as well. We're constantly finding ways to make things more convienient, faster, and better. Every new invention seems like simply an improvement over an old one.

But where does it end? What's worth time and effort nowadays?

Take this contraption for instance: The Plant Nanny. It helps regulate the amount of water going into your plants. Water seeps through the ceramic tube, giving your plants a healthy amount every time. Amazingly useful if you have a black thumb, or for those times you go on vacation. But seriously, how hard is it to water a plant every day? With this, everyone gets to be a potted-plant owner with virtually no effort. If you don't even want to take the five minutes to water it, I'm skeptical as to whether you should have it in the first place. (I also worry about your pets and/or children.)

It wouldn't indicate a certain amount of cheating so much if perhaps it didn't seeme like the whole world was going in this direction. Our society has just become so gluttonous and demanding that our cookies must be bite-sized (the name just suggests such laziness!), our plants must water themselves, and everything must have a remote control (God forbid we actually have to get up to operate something).

I'm thinking I need some change. I'm not necessarily going to start churning my own butter or anything, but one in a while I'm going to start using that extra time accumulated because of modern conveniences to engage in something that takes a little time and effort.