This is an activity for the badge Let's Get Cooking, combined with an activity I adapted from the Junior Girl Scout Handbook.  My troop did it two years ago at the beginning of our work on the badge.  It helped the girls understand why it's so important to wash our hands before preparing food, and even the leaders were surprised at the results of different hand-cleaning methods.  This would be a fun experiment for any group of kids over 3 years old, not just Girl Scouts.

There are two phases to be done on the first day, then follow-up a week later.  My troop was so interested in the results that we had two more weekly follow-ups to see how things progressed.  (Phase Two could be done by itself, if you aren't able to follow up.)

Phase One:
You will need:

• a sink with hot and cold water
• soap
• 3 clean cloth towels, or paper towels
• waterless hand sanitizer
• enough apples to make 1 big chunk per kid
• cutting board
• sharp knife
• 5 clean containers with tight-fitting lids, big enough to hold 1/5 of the apple chunks—I used old yogurt tubs
• masking tape and marker to label containers
• some kids with normally dirty hands.  I told the girls, "If anybody needs to use the bathroom, go now but don't wash your hands."

Wash the apples and your own hands thoroughly with hot water and soap, and cut up the apples immediately before beginning the experiment.

Divide the kids into 5 groups:

• Group 1 washes their hands really fast with cold water and soap—you know, like most people in a hurry would do—and dries them on Towel 1 or with paper towels.
• Group 2 rubs their hands together under hot water for a while, with no soap, and dries them on Towel 2 or with paper towels.
• Group 3 washes their hands thoroughly with hot water and soap and dries them on Towel 3 or with paper towels.
• Group 4 uses hand sanitizer.
• Group 5 does not clean their hands in any way.

As each group finishes cleaning their hands (or not), give each kid a chunk of apple.  Have them rub the apple with their hands until they feel sure they have touched every part of its surface.  Put the apples in a container, seal it, and label it with the hand-cleaning method.  Put away the containers until follow-up, making sure to store all of them in the same temperature and lighting conditions.  My troop had a large plastic storage bin to keep our supplies at the church where we met, so we put our apple tubs in there.

Phase Two:
You will need:

• a sink with hot and cold water
• soap
• cloth or paper towels
• waterless hand sanitizer
• vegetable oil
• some type of highly visible specks—I used some very old chili powder that had lost its zing.  Don't use new chili powder or other peppery things that might burn sensitive skin!
• some kids—the starting condition of their hands is not important, so this can be done immediately after Phase One.

Divide the kids into 4 groups.  (In my troop, I just explained what we were going to do and then asked for 4 volunteers—not all the girls wanted to do this part, but they all wanted to watch!)  Explain that this is going to be messy and they should not touch anything—especially their eyes; they don't want specks in their eyes—until their hands are fully clean afterward.

Pour about 1/2 teaspoon of oil into each kid's cupped hands and have them rub the oil all over their hands.

Have Group 1 hold their hands over the sink.  Sprinkle hands with specks.  Explain that these represent dirt and germs.  We are going to see how well different hand-cleaning methods remove dirt and germs from our hands.  Have Group 1 wash their hands really fast with cold water and soap (like Group 1 in Phase One), then hold them up for everyone to see.  How many specks came off?  Then let them use hot water, soap, and towels to remove the rest of the specks and oil.

Do the same with Groups 2, 3, and 4, with each of them using the same hand-cleaning method as their group in Phase One.

Discuss what you've learned.

Follow-up:
One week later, get out the containers and remind everybody what you did in Phase One.  Carefully open each container and look at the apples.  How have they changed?  What is different about the apples from the different groups?  Discuss what you've learned.

Our Results (Spoiler Alert!!!)
In Phase Two, Girl 1 was horrified by the way the specks and grease stayed on her hands at first.  She had to use a lot of soap!  Girl 2, with hot water but no soap, had less trouble; we speculated that this had less to do with hot water's ability to remove "germs" than with its ability to cut the grease that was making the specks cling to her hands.  Girl 3 got clean quickly and easily.  Girl 4 found that hand sanitizer turned the oil into a sticky mess, with specks intact, that she could move around on her hands but couldn't remove; it became more gummy as the alcohol evaporated.  She tried to rub it off with a paper towel, which stuck to her.  Yuck!!!  She finally resorted to hot water and soap.  Conclusions: Both hot water and soap are important for effective cleaning.  Hand sanitizer may kill germs, but it doesn't take stuff off your hands.  But after that second conclusion was stated, several girls told of experiences with rubbing hand sanitizer on things like ink and seeing it vanish.  Someone theorized that if the stuff will dissolve in alcohol, it will evaporate off your hands when the alcohol does.  (I'm not sure if that's correct, but it sounds plausible.)  Additional conclusion: Chili powder is not soluble in alcohol.

Our week-old apples had turned brown and were growing mold.  Group 4 (hand sanitizer) had as much mold as Group 5 (unwashed).  Groups 1 and 2 had less.  Group 3 (hot water and soap) had the least.  The girls agreed that the apples were not as gross as they'd expected and began chanting, "One more week!  One more week!" with great enthusiasm.

After two weeks, the apples were much mushier and moldier, with the less-moldiness of Group 3 more obvious than before.  Oddly, Group 1 (cold water and soap) was less brown and mushy than all the others.  Nobody could explain it.  We could now see that Group 1 had mostly white mold and Group 2 had mostly black mold.  We theorized that heat kills some molds better than others, and soap removes other molds better than the heat-sensitive ones.  "ONE! MORE! WEEK!!!  ONE! MORE! WEEK!!!"  "Okay, okay, stop yelling."

After three weeks, we could smell rotting apples before we even opened our storage bin.  All the apples were totally disgusting except Group 1, which seemed disturbingly well-preserved except for the moldy spots.  There were tentative suggestions that perhaps the girls in Group 1 just happened to have cleaner hands before starting the experiment.  The black mold had produced fruiting bodies, which fascinated some of the girls.  Group 4 (hand sanitizer) was now the most moldy, but Group 5 (unwashed) had the greatest variety of mold, four different kinds that we could see, and was visibly the most rotten.

Conclusions:

• Yeah, yeah, we all know that hot water and soap are best for getting hands really clean.  Seeing the differences motivated us to be more careful about proper handwashing. 
• Hand sanitizer does not kill mold, at least not all species of it.  All of us were surprised by that, but after all hand sanitizer is marketed to kill bacteria, not mold.
• Cut-up apples at room temperature go bad, no matter how clean they are.

Visit Works-for-Me Wednesday for other good ideas on a variety of subjects!

        

In my six years as a Girl Scout leader, we always had a snack during each troop meeting.  We met from 5:00 to 6:30 p.m., so a few families fed their girls dinner before the meeting, but most families waited until after the meeting, and by the time they got home it might be later than their usual dinnertime . . . so we usually ate the snack early in the meeting to prevent girls from being hungry without spoiling their dinners.

We tried several different methods of snack supply:

• The troop was founded with no co-leader (I joined about a month after it started), so the founding leader set a policy that each girl's parent(s) had to take a turn to help with the meeting and provide the snack.  This worked out fine so far as snacks were concerned.  The problems were that some families consistently dodged their turns (we got all of them at least once, but some parents volunteered again and again while others had one turn all year) and that many of the parents acted as if the snack was their sole responsibility and would try to spend the rest of the meeting reading or talking on a cell phone; we had to coax pretty hard to get them involved in helping with the activities.
• In the second and third years, we had the girls take turns bringing the snack; that is, we made it their responsibility to volunteer and follow through.  This is how troop snacks were done in my troops as a girl, and we always had a decorated coffee can that was used to transport the snack and also served as a reminder to the snack hostess—that is, it would be sitting on your kitchen counter for a week, reminding you that it was your turn.  When I was a leader, we found that many girls were bringing far too much food (eating took up too much of the meeting time and provided excessive calories), so I decorated a can, figuring it would serve as a guideline for the total volume of food . . . but for some reason, our girls had a lot more trouble remembering the can (either when leaving the meeting at which they'd volunteered for next week's snack, or when leaving home with the snack which they hadn't put in the can) than the girls in my childhood troops, so we gave up on that.  We did find that asking the girls, rather than parents, to volunteer meant that the responsibility rotated more evenly among families.
• In the fourth year, my co-leader and I took turns bringing the snack, which was purchased with troop funds.  We suggested this to the girls at the beginning of the year, and they voted to do it and to set their dues at $1 per meeting instead of 50c per meeting so that we could budget 50c per girl per meeting for snacks.  This solved the problem of girls bringing way too much food, things that allergic members couldn't eat, or unhealthy foods.  (For example, one girl had brought single-serving cups of hot-pink artificially-sweetened gelatin containing tiny chunks of pears, and her mother proudly told me, "I wanted to bring something healthy!"  I was tempted to respond, "So why didn't you?" but just smiled.)  However, since both leaders were coming straight from work to the meeting by bus, transporting the snack was inconvenient.
• As we prepared to start the fifth year, I was feeling overwhelmed and did some brainstorming about new volunteer "positions" that might entice some of the parents to help us a bit more.  I realized we could have a "snack mom" bring the snack to each meeting and be reimbursed with troop funds.  This was my favorite of all the methods!  We had good snacks, reliably provided, with less hassle for leaders.  Snack Mom was very good at sticking to the budget and dietary restrictions.  We just had to keep her informed of any changes in attendance patterns or dietary restrictions.

Once, in the era of girls bringing snacks, we had a learning opportunity: The snack hostess didn't come to the meeting.  Apparently it wasn't a sudden change of plans; she'd told another troop member attending her school that she wouldn't be coming.  However, neither she nor her parents had informed the leaders that she wouldn't be bringing the snack after all.  One of the other leaders said we could feed the girls the candy she'd just bought for trick-or-treat, which was in her car.  I quickly spoke up and said that if the girl who's supposed to bring snack abandons her responsibility, there should be no snack.  This teaches the girls that it's important to follow through when you volunteer, whereas supplying an "emergency" snack would teach them that if they abandon their responsibilities grown-ups will cover for them.  So we went straight into our activities at the point when we'd normally have snack, and then after the dress-for-the-weather relay race we drank water, so the Assistant Hostess, Cup Collector, and Bubblers still had jobs to do. There was some grumbling about the lack of food, but I think the lesson got through.

Here are some of the snacks that were most popular:

• fruit plus a salty snack, such as apples and pretzels
• cheese and crackers (Choose crackers that taste good on their own, so that girls who are vegan or allergic to milk will be happy with just crackers.)
• corn chips and mild salsa
• O's cereal and vanilla yogurt
• carrot sticks (cut ahead of time) or baby carrots 
• nut butter and crackers
• make your own trail mix: raisins, nuts, pretzels, etc. are set out in bowls; each girl is given a small bag to fill
• popcorn plus juice (Never serve popcorn without something to drink!)
• granola bars (bought on sale with a coupon!)

To my surprise, most of the girls also liked raw kale!

        

Until last month, I had been carrying a 135-minute phone card in my wallet since October 2000.  I didn't take it out because I'd used up the minutes.  I took it out because the plastic is so old that it crumbled when I tried to transfer it to the new wallet I got for Christmas!  That tells you how many times I have needed to call a number outside the area code where I was, when I was not able to use my home phone or someone else's phone.  It just isn't that necessary!

I don't have a cell phone, I don't want a cell phone, and I get along really well without one!  In These Days of Economic Crisis, when everybody's trying to economize, I hear that some people are giving up the family land line telephone and having only cell phones, but I have not yet seen anybody preaching that you can give up your cell phone and survive—just like we all did earlier in our own lifetimes!--and save money, save energy, and have a saner lifestyle.  Here's how it works for me:

I don't have to be in touch with everybody every freaking minute.  In fact, as the mother of a demanding five-year-old, I rather enjoy those times when nobody knows where I am!  If something goes wrong with him, his school most likely will be able to reach his dad, and if not they've got six other authorized emergency contact people, so I can have a moment off duty.  I don't need to talk to my mommy every single day, nor do I need to call Daniel (my partner) from every place I go.  Sure, I sometimes call Daniel from work if I have an important question or I'm very upset, but I don't call just to say I arrived safely after my normal commute—he can assume that!  We do our best to have conversations when we're actually together and to work out our plans on our own time.  I don't see how it would save time if I stood around the supermarket debating with him by phone about what to have for dinner, instead of figuring it out before I leave for the store or just making the decision myself.

Now, more about that phone card.  It provides a toll-free number and an access code that gives me long-distance minutes that I paid for when I bought the card; they never expire.  The physical card is not important, just the numbers, so I copied the numbers onto a piece of stiff paper and put that in my wallet instead—presto, new phone card!  I never use it from my home phone because long-distance rates have become so reasonable.  For the same reason, when I'm visiting someone and ask if it's okay if I make a long-distance call (for example, calling home to tell Daniel I arrived safely) usually they don't mind at all.  So the only time I need it is when I'm calling long-distance from

• my office, where I am not allowed to make personal long-distance calls
• a pay phone
• a hospital room, where cell phones are not allowed.

These situations don't come up much, and when they do it's usually a short call—all such calls I've made in nine years have totaled less than two hours.  But I have been glad to have it sometimes.  For example, when a friend is in town and calls me at work to make plans for the evening, but I'm away from my desk and she leaves a voicemail with her out-of-town cell number, this is how I call back.

In case of emergency, I trust that I will get the help I need.  I live in the city, and when I travel it's usually on roads with a lot of other vehicles, so if something went wrong I'm sure somebody else could call 911.  Sure, I'm aware of the Kitty Genovese phenomenon (the bystander effect, in which everyone thinks someone else will get help) but you know why Kitty Genovese's name still is so tightly associated with it 46 years later?  Because it usually doesn't happen that way!  And do you think Kitty Genovese would have been saved if she'd had a cell phone?  In a serious emergency, you might not be able to use a cell phone anyway, or it could be damaged or taken from you.  It doesn't make me feel much safer.
    Also, in a situation where you are not able to speak into the phone long enough to tell the operator your exact location, a land line can be traced more reliably than a cell phone.  A cell phone may even route your call to a faraway 911 dispatcher, resulting in delay as he transfers your call or figures out what services can reach you.  (This happened to us the one time we used Daniel's cell phone in an emergency: Our car's electrical system totally failed on I-70 in rural Ohio.  The call was routed to 911 in Columbus, over 100 miles away, not to the closest 911 center.  They called the Highway Patrol and had them call us back!)

I check my messages and return calls promptly when I get home or get to work.  Honestly, I don't think I'm any harder to reach than cell phone people, who are constantly telling me, "Sorry, I turned off my phone for a movie and forgot to turn it back on." or "My battery ran down."

I store phone numbers in my brain and in my address book.  I do not rely on the memory of an electronic device and then lose my ability to contact anyone after the phone falls into the toilet.  I transcribe numbers from the address book in my purse into my computer database, so I have a backup, and I memorize numbers I use often.  I don't use speed dial even on my home phone because dialing a number helps me learn it, which is worth the few seconds it takes.  I know my own phone numbers!!  I can't believe I have to say that, but honestly, that's a vital bit of personal responsibility we all learned from an early age, yet in the past few years I've encountered so many people who don't know their own number without looking it up!

I can find a phone when I need one.  There are still pay phones in a lot of places.  Many public buildings and businesses will let you use a phone if you ask politely.  Many strangers will let you use their cell phones for a brief call (example: "I'm trying to visit my friend in this apartment building, but the intercom on the outer door is broken; can I call to ask her to open the door for me?")—although I guess that may depend on your having a nonthreatening appearance so they don't think you're going to steal the phone.
    Cell phones do make more sense for people who spend a lot of time in places where phones are miles apart (if there's cell reception out there...) but for people who live in a city or suburb or small town, as most Americans do, I think using a cell phone makes about as much sense as driving an SUV on paved roads.  Like many disposable items, it's a technology that should be reserved for the situations that really demand it.

I appreciate opportunities to give my opinion.  One touted advantage of cell phones is that pollsters and telemarketers don't call them.  Well, I don't care for telemarketing calls, but we eliminated almost all of them (we get about two per year now) by putting our number on the national Do Not Call list.  I do want to participate in telephone polls—political polls, opinion polls, market research surveys, demographic surveys, whatever—so that my opinions and my demographic group get represented. 

My kid communicates with me the same way I did with my parents: When he goes somewhere alone, we agree on where he's going and approximately when he'll be back.  He's only five, so at this point he's only playing up the block a little way.  If he wants to go inside someone's house or his friend's dad offers to take them to the park, he needs to come home and ask permission.  If I want to leave home while he's out, I need to go up the block and get him or arrange for him to stay there until I come home.
    As he gets older and expands his range, he'll find phones—just like I do—to communicate any changes in plans by calling us at home or work.  Otherwise, we'll trust that he is where he said he'd be, and we won't expect to hear from him until it's time for him to come home.  If we can't trust him to stick to a plan, how can we trust him to go out on his own?  Generations of kids grew up into responsible adults without having cell phones or even having parents who had cell phones.  It can be done!

        

A year or so ago, my church's assistant pastor began a sermon by saying, "You may never have really noticed our stained-glass windows."  My jaw dropped.  How could anyone not notice our stained-glass windows?!  They're beautiful!  They're very colorful, they depict a variety of Biblical characters and saints and symbols from obvious to obscure, and they have a lovely old-fashioned style.  I've spent many hours gazing at them.

Even if a person never gave much thought to what's depicted in the stained glass, how could anyone fail to notice the colors?  For several years I always sat near the St. Patrick window so I could soak in the jade green of his cloak and the velvety purple of his robe.  The red is a glowing ruby red.  And the blue!  Many of the windows have backgrounds or borders of bright blue glass, a shade both intense and deep, the bluest blue there is!  I don't see how anyone could spend one minute in that room during daylight and not notice that spectacular, brilliant, bluest blue!

Well.  Unless they were blind.  At first that was a brush-off sort of thought, which I was going to use to set aside my astonishment and focus on the main topic of the sermon.  But it turned out that I never did resume listening to the sermon (sorry, Jared) because that first sentence opened a door through which I was snowed under by layers and layers of gratitude:

• I can see.  The fact that eyes work is really extremely impressive.  What a cool design that is!  (I do believe in evolution.  I believe God wrote the laws of science and created atoms, and evolution is God's plan.)  How amazing to be able to detect the bouncing of light rays off objects and process that information so rapidly that I can make split-second decisions about which way to move, I can read, I can recognize people, I can move my hand exactly the right distance and bend it exactly the right amount to pick up even an object I've never touched before.
• There are many wonderful things to see.  There's art like this, nature, expressions on people's faces, bits of unexpected beauty even in mundane things like melting snow in the gutter. 
• I was born in a time when people can make lenses that give perfect vision to those of us whose eyeballs aren't quite the right shape.  How impressive that people figured out how to do that so well and even how to make lenses that ride comfortably right there on my eyes so I can see clearly all around me!  And I can keep wearing them day after day because somebody invented a cushy liquid polymer stuff, somebody figured out how to keep it sterile in a bottle, and people I never met labor in factories so that I can buy that stuff.
• I was born into a family that could afford optometric care, so I have never had to get by with uncorrected vision.  It's annoying that my eyes on their own blur everything more than nine inches away, but with my contacts I get a clear, sharp focus on things hundreds of feet away.  This luxury is quite low-priced for the value it provides, but it does come at a price, and I'm lucky that I've always had that money or someone to provide it for me.
• I have excellent color vision.  (I can distinguish blue, green, and purple pyramids easily even in very dim light.)  The bluest blue is a striking color by the standards of anyone who can see blue at all, but I suspect it's even bluer for me.  I am grateful for every nuance of that blue and for all the millions of colors that surround me every day.

So that comment about not noticing the stained glass, which seemed to be so preposterous, actually got me to see the stained glass at many more levels than I had before.  Now it is a weekly reminder to give thanks for the many gifts I easily take for granted.  Yeah, we may be late for church because my kid spent 15 minutes whining about wanting to wear a particular pair of socks he couldn't find or describe, and I may have a headache and cold feet and a bunch of dreaded chores planned for the afternoon, but here is the bluest blue existing just to please our eyes.  Am I really so very angry?

A few months later, my son and I spent the Saturday before Palm Sunday helping to clean up the church for the holidays.  We dusted and polished the stained-glass windows, the carved stone arches, and the intricate woodwork.  Examining these details so closely made me think of the people who gave these things to us.  Like our parish dishes, our church building and most of its furnishings were selected and paid for by people long ago, who loved God and one another and us enough to put their time, talent, and treasure into creating a glorious place that would last for generations.  Our parish has only about 100 members now, and many of us are threadbare academic types whose best efforts would be barely able to buy and furnish any kind of building if we were starting now.  It's only because of the gifts of the past, and because we have taken good care of what we have, that we have a beautiful and extremely useful building to enjoy today.

Our whole planet is like that!  It's an enormous, amazing gift.  Every part of it was put in place long ago, and all we have to do is take care of it.  Not even six billion of us working together could buy and furnish a new planet, so we are lucky to have this one.  This gift was so immense, so rich, so wonderfully designed and balanced, so forgiving, that even our reckless behavior these last few centuries hasn't destroyed it.  Despite all the broken places, we still have a beautiful and extremely useful planet to enjoy today.  We've just got to really notice it, be grateful, fix it up, and take good care of it.

You may never have noticed the way sunlight shines through leaves and illuminates them with the greenest green.  Look for it this spring.  Let it dazzle you in the most unexpected times and places, give thanks for the big gift that is so easily taken for granted, and get to work fixing up our planet for all the Earthlings yet to come.

        

Due to the troubled economy on Mars, you've decided to break into the Earth pizza market. You've developed an assortment of brands that are nontoxic and nicely inconspicuous...you think. The next step is to test-market your wares in a controlled area where you can closely observe the results.
   
Thus, you have dispatched families of Martians to construct an Earth Suburb to attract humans. Each Martian family will then live in the suburb, masquerading as humans, and sell pizza to the Earthlings.
    
Your marketing division has developed a scheme for laying out and naming streets that's guaranteed to produce a suburb with Earthling appeal.  Just find a flat surface, start building, and let the Earthlings move in and start buying pizzas!

What?!
That's the pitch for a deck of cards/tiles I designed, which can be used to build a map of a suburban area.  That's a fun puzzle, but everybody who sees it wants to play a game on the finished map.  The question is, what's the game and what are the rules?  I've been banging my head against this question for years without results, so for this week's backwards edition of Works-for-Me Wednesday when writers ask how to get something to work, I'm asking the Internet, How do I get this game to work?  You can print out the tiles and booklet here for free, but if you want to start by reading and thinking about the game without downloading anything, here's the part of the booklet about the game ideas we've had so far [with bracketed notes on a few things I've thought of since writing the booklet]:

What is Rambling Sprawl Estates?
By shuffling these tiles, then placing them one at a time in a grid formation, following the Layout Rules, you can build a map of a charming Earth Suburb.  The process of laying out the map can be a relaxing puzzle or a competitive game.  Once you've built your sprawl, you can play the pizza-selling game, in theory....
 
A "beta test" is an opportunity for customers to contribute to the development of a new product before its official release. In the case of Rambling Sprawl Estates, you can help to design the game!  We think building sprawl is fun, and delivering pizzas seems like an interesting way to use the resulting map.  But the pizza-delivery game's rules are not complete. Rather than keep working in isolation until the game is perfect, we decided to release the deck (with temporary art) so that you can enjoy the layout phase and help us figure out how to make the game as much fun as building the sprawl!
    
So bulldoze the clutter off your table to make way for suburban development. Experiment with our rules or any others you're inspired to create, and send your ideas, suggestions, or comments to us at sprawl[at]efran[dot]org or post a comment here.

Get out there and sell some pizza!
Uh oh. The home office forgot to send the manuals for the pizzerias. Good thing you took notes during mission training!  Here are the ideas you're starting with:
 • Use Icehouse pieces (versatile pyramids from Looney Labs) to represent your pizza-delivery vehicles. They are the right size for the streets and come in colors to match the pizzerias. If you don't have pyramids, though, use some other type of game pieces.
 • Each pizzeria has 3 vehicles of different sizes, with different movement abilities:
      • The large van moves up to 6 tiles per turn (has 6 movement points).  Its pizza capacity is limited only by the number of pending orders (see below) [or could be limited to 3].  Getting out of the van to deliver a pizza takes 1 movement point.  Reversing direction takes 2.
      • The medium-sized car is the same as the van except that it can hold only 2 pizzas and takes only 1 point to reverse. 
      • The small bike can move 3 tiles per turn and carry 1 pizza.  It can cut across parking lots anywhere non-residential tiles touch and can drive through Sprawl-Mart, up/down the steps, and across any vacant lot completely surrounded by tiles.  It cannot drive across lawns or jump off the bridge.
 • Use small tokens or bits of colored paper to represent the pizzas. [or just carry the pizza order slip with the vehicle holding that pizza]
 • Cut up the list of street and business names; these are the locations of pizza orders.  [The most recent idea I tried was using the order slip to represent the pizza.  That makes each pizza specific, so that it must be delivered tothe customer who ordered it.  That changes the next 2 bullet points: Any driver may pick up an order from any pizzeria.  Since the pizzas aren't interchangeable, there's no way to put too many into circulation.]
 • On her turn, each player receives an order.  [Alternatively, at the beginning of each round 2 or 3 orders are received by pizzerias randomly selected by rolling dice.]  If she hasn't filled the order by the end of her turn, another pizzeria may fill it—the customer won't notice until after paying for it!  The player who fills an order keeps the slip of paper representing it.
 • When a vehicle leaves its pizzeria, it may carry a number of pizzas that (a) does not exceed its capacity and (b) does not cause the pizzeria's fleet of 3 vehicles to be carrying more pizzas than the number of pending orders.  For example, if 3 orders for 1 pizza each and 1 order for 2 pizzas are waiting to be filled, a pizzeria's fleet may carry up to 5 pizzas; if its bike is carrying 1 and car is carrying 2, when the van refills it may take only 2 pizzas.
 • Pizza(s) may be transferred from one vehicle to another if both vehicles are on the same tile and each uses 1 movement point for the transfer.
 • The bike can be transported in the van if there is no more than 1 pizza in the van.
 • Only the bike can deliver a pizza on the steps.
 • Might there be some action cards?  Maybe you draw one each time you return to your pizzeria.
 
[The biggest stumbling block for this game is how to make it competitive and interesting, instead of just a realistic simulation of having a job delivering pizzas!  You need some way of interfering with your competitors' deliveries.]

Maybe there's more to life than selling pizzas.
Games with other themes could be played on this map. You might try a game of Martian family life in which you enhance your Earth camouflage by engaging in Earth customs: Transport your children to enriching activities, and buy them shoes without getting mired in the nearby toy store. Let your teens rack up social points in the pizzerias, arcade, and newsstand, but make sure they get to the library and
orthodontist. Get all your offspring to school on time!  Send two of your adults to work at Develocorp and The Mall while the other runs errands.

Here are some hints for family management:
 • A typical Martian nuclear family is 3 adults, 3 teens, and 3 children.  Use Icehouse pyramids to represent family members.
 • Each family's home is on the tile corresponding to the family name: Red=Apple, Orange=Fox, Yellow=Golden, Green=Green, Blue=Lake, Purple=Berry, Cyan=Brook, Magenta=Flower, Clear=Hollow, Black=Shade, White=Marble, Gray=Stone.
 • Each adult's minivan is capable of transporting all 6 offspring.  (Turn a large pyramid on its side for driving, and nest the offspring inside.)  The number of tiles each van can move per turn is 10 minus the number of offspring in the van.  Dropping off and/or picking up offspring uses 1 movement point.
 • Teens may walk 3 tiles per turn.  Their movement points may be used (instead of their parents') for getting into and out of vans.  They can cut across parking lots anywhere non-residential tiles touch, through Sprawl-Mart, up/down the steps, and across any vacant lot completely surrounded by tiles.  They cannot walk across lawns or jump off the bridge.
 • Children are not allowed to walk anywhere.  What, do you want them to get molested by an Earthling?!
 • Set a number of turns to represent the school day, a number for the work day, and a number for the entire day. 
 • Your family's final goal for the day is to get all your family members home along with a pizza picked up from the pizzeria of the same color.

How can this become a competitive game, rather than a tedious process of parallel accomplishment? If you have any great ideas for actions or other tweaks that make the game more fun, please tell us.  We hope you'll have some good ideas!  Send your suggestions and comments to sprawl[at]efran[dot]org or post a comment here.

Tile concept and design by 'Becca Stallings
Alpha deck refinements by Alison Frane
Beta deck art by Dan Efran
Copyright ©2007-2009 Rebecca Stallings.  All Rights Reserved.

Thank you for helping!  If you find that you love Rambling Sprawl Estates as a puzzle but have no idea what game could be played on the map, I'd love to hear from you anyway—it would be fun to hear from others like myself!

        

Find a penny, pick it up;
All the day you'll have good luck.
I've enjoyed this superstition since I was a child and taught it to my child, but I never seriously believed it was true.  The real reason I pick up coins I find on the ground is that they're money, and I figure every little bit adds up.  Still, the idea that finding a penny brings good luck gives me a little blip of optimism. 

I think my son, who just turned five, sees it about the same way.  He's very logical, and although he loves stories about magical adventures and talking animals, he doesn't believe in the literal existence of things like Santa Claus.  He doesn't quite understand how money works yet, but he likes coins and always wants to play with them and put them in his banks, so he picks up any that he finds and often remarks cheerfully, "It's good luck!"

On our way home from church Sunday afternoon, we stopped into the supermarket for a few things, and we found not only a penny but also a dime on the floor.  I saw them first but let Nicholas pick them up.  We walked on toward home (down the steep hill of our neighborhood business district) singing about pennies and good luck and bagels and such, feeling lucky.

All of a sudden, Nicholas tripped and fell, smashing his face into the projecting corner of a store's windowsill.

There followed one of those moments of shocked and dreadful silence in which time slows down and holds its breath before the screaming begins.  It was exactly long enough for me to drop into a crouch on the sidewalk and to think, "I am not afraid." I actually felt kind of like Frog and Toad in the story where they dodge several hazards while shrieking hysterically, "We are not afraid!" and run home to hide in the closet "feeling very brave together"—but I hoped that this Jedi mind trick would help me to cope with what I would see when my beautiful baby boy turned around.

His mouth was full of blood, and blood was pouring down his chin, and he was screaming in pain and horror.  (It was only later that I realized he also was holding his head far forward so that the blood dripped onto the sidewalk instead of onto his white shirt and khakis—that's my amazing kid!!)  He screamed even louder when I opened his mouth, as gently as I could, to make sure all his teeth were there.  They were, and he had not hit his nose or head.  Whew!  But he had an enormous gash inside his lower lip and big abrasions on the outside of his lip and chin, as well as some smaller scrapes on his arms.

I said, "Oh, you cut your lip!  Oh, that hurts so much!!" and applied direct pressure with my handkerchief.  Employees of nearby businesses came running out with ice and tissues (well, actually toilet paper, which fell apart in Nick's mouth and got him even more upset, but it was a kind thought!) and offers of help.  Nicholas, with his mouth full, was pointing frantically at the ground downhill, and eventually I realized he was gesturing at his penny and dime, which he'd dropped when he fell.  I put them back into his hand.

The bleeding slowed to almost none after just a couple of minutes.  I decided we would go home to get our car and go to Children's Hospital emergency room to get the cut cleaned and see if it needed stitches.  At some point during those last two blocks of our walk, I grumbled something about the irony of our singing about good luck just as this happened.  It reminded me of the Easter when I was his age, when I was so delighted about the first day of barefoot weather that I blindly skipped onto a bee, who stung me on the foot.  Grrr, why do these happy moments end in our being busted down like that?!

During our stint in the ER waiting room, I didn't notice that Nicholas still had his hand clenched.  He was fairly calm and was pleased by the opportunity to watch "Hannah Montana" (gaaahh!!), although he speculated at least as often as I did about why we were waiting more than an hour when the ER was almost empty.  Finally he was examined by a doctor, who cleaned the wound with saline and peroxide.  Nicholas took it about as well as anyone could.  I held his hand and noticed his other fist clenched tightly.

We agreed it was now time for a special treat to reward our bravery and patience, so I drove us to the Carnegie Science Center to see the huge model train layout . . . and they were closed because the stupid football game (nothing against the Steelers; all football games are stupid in my mind) across the street had brought so much traffic congestion to the area and brought the Science Center the opportunity to rent its parking spaces to football fans!   We were very disappointed, and I hate driving in traffic jams, and I was starving (having missed lunch) so completely out of patience.  What bad luck!  Grrr!!  Nicholas, though, soon looked across the river and noticed the incline zipping up and down Mount Washington and said, "Hey, let's go ride the incline!"  So we did that—we got over there surprisingly quickly and had a pleasant ride.  Then we headed home, having lost our entire afternoon to one second's mishap.

At home, Nicholas handed me the penny and the dime and said, "Put my lucky coins in my Thomas bank, please."

After all that bad luck, he still thought those coins were lucky!

That's when I realized: We did have good luck!  He didn't need stitches.  He didn't need one of those shots of local anesthetic that is itself horribly painful.  He won't be permanently disfigured or brain-injured.  His pain already had receded so much that I never did get around to giving him any medication.  We had an easy way to get to a hospital with a clean, colorful, comfortable waiting room.  He'd received good medical care that would be covered by our insurance.  He'd accepted the disappointment of the Science Center being closed without a tantrum (I came closer to a tantrum than he did!) and we'd found another special treat to substitute for it.  We'd seen beautiful late-winter-afternoon views of our lovely city from places we wouldn't have been on this day if this hadn't happened.

And when the doctor poured peroxide onto a gauze pad and pressed it right into an open wound in one of the more sensitive parts of his body, my brave, brave, brave boy just clutched those lucky coins and protested, "Hiss dushn't 'feel bubbly'; id HURRRTS!!!" while basically holding still and cooperating.  I must not take that for granted.

Those lucky coins worked for me!  I just didn't recognize it at first.  Sometimes it takes a little child to show me the true value of eleven cents.

        

I'm posting the portion of this article I've written today, but I plan to add to it later (like I do with my links page).  Check back once in a while!

This is a list of books that made a big difference to me at the time I first read them, and in some cases forever afterward, by giving me many new things to think about and/or a completely different angle on an old favorite topic.  I highly recommend them all.  They're in approximately chronological order according to when I first read them, but that doesn't mean anyone else needs to read them in this particular order, and where I mention ages please take into account that I was a very precocious reader—many kids will not be able to read these books to themselves until they are several years older.  (Check out these great chapter books for kids!)

I am not linking these book titles to their listings on Amazon, mainly because that's unnecessary annoyance for me but also because I encourage you to resist ordering new books to be shipped to you at your slightest whim!  Look for them at your local public library, consider requesting them via interlibrary loan, wait for them to turn up used, buy them from the real-life bookstore closest to your home . . .or if you must, as a last resort, order online, consider Powell's which I've found superior to Amazon in accuracy of order-filling, environmentally friendly packaging, visual clarity of Website, ability to refrain from spamming its customers, and general vibe.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle was the first book to fill my head with ideas so rapidly and excitingly that I had to set it down between chapters just to catch my breath and give my neurons a chance to settle down.  This children's science fiction novel first caught my attention as a radio dramatization when I was in kindergarten, and I read the book soon after that.  It's about time travel, weird mathematical concepts, the powers of wacky women and misfit kids, aliens who are fascinatingly different from us spiritually as well as physically, the horrors of conformity, the nature of equality, and the triumph of love.  The dialogue and narrative flow are excellent.  It's complex and intriguing enough to hook adults, even those who've read it twentysome times like I have!

Worlds to Explore was the handbook for Girl Scout Brownies and Juniors in the 1970s.  I happened to find a copy in a used-book store when I was in kindergarten.  Reading it overwhelmed me with the desire to become a Girl Scout, to adopt and live by those principles while doing all that cool stuff!  I joined Girl Scouts at my first opportunity, in second grade, and I was a Scout clear through high school, worked as a camp cook and counselor, and later became a troop leader for six years.  Worlds to Explore has been one of my favorite references throughout, despite my ownership of newer handbooks, because of its welcoming, inspiring tone and its perfect balance of well-organized reference materials with fun little tangents.  Its Suzy Safety section taught me first-aid skills and a sense of competence in an emergency that have served me well many times.

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin is a "puzzle-mystery" with so many twists and turns that I'm still not sure I understand the whole thing.  There are many characters, all keeping secrets from each other and from the reader, and they're all potential heirs named in the will of an eccentric mastermind who forces them (and you) to play his crazy game.  Let me publicly thank my childhood friend Helen Dover, who was not so much of a reader as I was, for happening to choose this book as my Christmas gift in fourth grade!  [Note: I've read other books by Ellen Raskin that pretty much sucked, so don't bother with them.  The Westing Game is the good one!]

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin is science fiction about a man living in a future dystopia who is able to have dreams that come true.  He seeks therapy, and his corrupt therapist tries to use his dreams to improve the world, with many unexpected results.  I didn't actually read this book until college, but it's early in my list because I saw the made-for-PBS movie when I was six or seven and experienced the mind-blowing of this story then.  The book is even better!

The Chosen by Chaim Potok is the story of an ordinary Jewish teenaged boy in 1940s Brooklyn who is the victim of an accidental injury that leads to his friendship with a super-Orthodox Hasidic Jew the same age.  Although the two boys have lived within walking distance of each other all their lives, they've lived in separate worlds and have a lot to learn about each other and life in general.  That sounds trite, but it isn't, because of the compelling writing.  This book conveys such a vivid sense of place and time that it draws you into both boys' worlds and holds a part of you there.  It's the book I chose to re-read both on the plane when I left for college the first time and in the hospital when my newborn son was being treated for jaundice, because I knew I could rely on those worlds to provide just the right amount of distraction and (after so many readings) comfortable familiarity.

Houses by Mail by Katherine Cole Stevenson and H. Ward Jandl is a book about the house-building kits sold through the Sears catalog in the early twentieth century.  This is the book my uncle Ken chose when I asked for "floor plan books" for Christmas at age twelve.  I'd been interested in architecture for a couple of years and had been looking at magazines and even meeting with a local architect through a mentor program, but my focus had been entirely on new buildings.  Houses by Mail opened my eyes to the design features of earlier eras and helped me to understand why I found houses built before World War II so much more pleasant to occupy than newer houses.  It revolutionized my own amateur designs and informed my critiques of new buildings.  And it placed me firmly on the road toward an aesthetic sensibility that would render me unable to survive in a cutting-edge architecture school of the early 1990s—but that's just fine, as it turns out!  I'm not an architect now, but I still spend hours at a time gazing at Houses by Mail and taking off on related flights of imagination.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood is a novel that plays with time but isn't science fiction.  It's the story of Elaine, a middle-aged painter who has some complicated memories to work through, and it jumps back and forth between the present and the past, moving in sequence along each time-line but hopping between them frequently.  The past is every bit as real and vivid as the present.  Sensory details, in particular, are so perfectly described that I now feel as if I have been an eight-year-old girl in 1940s Ontario.
    Unfortunately, this book's engrossing narrative and perfectly structured mood ravel apart toward the end, when the central conflict of Elaine's past is told but for some reason the story goes on, as if Atwood had a collection of memories she wanted to work in there.  Not all of these are irrelevant, and they're interesting to read, but Elaine's apparent psychological health in her young adulthood doesn't quite make sense, and many parts of the story are unresolved and left hanging.  At first I read this as a comment on what life is really like, but with repeated readings it's come to bother me more.
    Still, this is an excellent novel, one that really makes you think about the natures of time and memory.  It's ideal for a long trip or illness when you want to really sink into a book.

Experiencing Architecture by Steen Eiler Rasmussen was required reading in my first year of architecture school, and I agree that it should be required for every architect, maybe even for every person!  It explains how constructed spaces "work" aesthetically, in a way that's very clear and easy to understand.  It's the sort of book that makes you feel smarter as you realize just how much you know but didn't know you knew!

Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson are science-fiction novels packed tightly with ideas and interesting characters, set a few decades apart in a rapidly changing not-too-distant future.  Both of them are a bit too violent for my tastes, but I forgive them because of all the cool stuff that happens in between the mayhem.  Both books include strong female characters, clever use of psychology to change the world, and overwhelming inundations of both future technology and ironically-derived future culture.  Snow Crash is about a drug, or maybe it's a computer virus, or maybe it's a religion, or maybe it's a human virus, or maybe it's all of the above.  The Diamond Age is about the power of a book to change a little girl's life, about a proper gentleman who accidentally joins an undersea nude drumming cult, about the Mouse Army of Chinese orphan girls, and more.

The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris is a book I love despite disagreeing with its fundamental premise!  Morris is a zoologist who, in this book, explains humans as animals.  He has many fascinating insights into how we work and why we do some of the things we do.  He's particularly skilled in breaking down some kinds of behaviors into categories, for example the different kinds of sex—the different reasons people have sex to fulfill different needs.  It's another of these books that spells out things you didn't know you knew.  The one thing that bugs me is that his central thesis is that human beings are wild animals who ought by nature to be roaming the savannas, so living in cities or even towns is like being incarcerated in a zoo, and this explains all human deviance and misery.  I'll probably rant all about this in another article someday, but briefly: It seems to me that humans are not wild but domesticated animals and that we have domesticated ourselves.  While not all of our built environments are ideal and some do have zoo-like effects, in general urban living is healthy and functional for many humans and does not equate to being imprisoned by a more powerful species.  So reading The Human Zoo causes me to have an ongoing mental argument with the author, but it's still a great book!

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell (the first name is a pen name used by the prolific mystery author for her more novel-like books) is in my opinion the very best of the many excellent books by this author.  It's about a woman who knows that one of her aunts killed the other but doesn't know why and doesn't know which of them was the biological mother of the baby they were fighting over.  The story is filled with twists and turns, extremely well-drawn characters, vivid descriptions of time and place and sensory experience, and the kind of Britishly suppressed tension that makes for excellent suspense.  My favorite thing about it is that, even after reading it six times, I can't quite remember exactly how it turns out! 

How Like a God by Brenda W. Clough is the story of an ordinary suburban daddy who gradually develops the power to read minds and make others do his will.  He runs away from home, is kind of crazy for a while, and then makes a new friend who helps him figure out what to do next.  This ultimately results in a trip to Kazakhstan, where all kinds of interesting stuff goes down.  I love this book but find it very hard to describe!  The best things about it are that the main weird thing (the part that makes it science fiction) is different from any other story I know, and that the experience of being Rob Lewis as he goes through this weird thing is so vivid and real.

The next three books came my way when a neighbor moved out and left a bunch of unwanted stuff on her porch.  Laura Schatzkamer, wherever you are now, I thank you!

In the Country of the Young by John W. Aldridge was written in 1969, so the Young he's talking about are Baby Boomers.  He explains why his own generation had so many children so rapidly, why they raised them the way they did, and why they built the style of suburbs they did.  He goes on to analyze the values, behavior, and logic of the Young.  What's so striking about this book is that his characterization of the Young is so accurate and chillingly insightful, even to a Generation X person who's always known the Young as "adults not quite as old as my parents" reading this book first 30 and now 40 years later.  It explains the Young's formative influences and the exact direction of their diversion from previous generations, in a different way from anything else I've read.  The really mindblowing realization for me was that we're now living in the Country of the Young, much more so than in the '60s, because the Young are running the government and the economy and the advertising and the entertainment industry, and their influence pervades our whole society now.  And the fact that they're no longer young is everybody's problem.

How Children Learn by John Holt is about a teacher's observations of young children, both in the classroom and in more casual settings.  Much of the book is diary entries and other vignettes.  It makes very clear that children are their own best teachers and can learn from all kinds of everyday objects and experiences, not just from formal lessons.  It's very inspiring and has been fun to reread as I watch my own child learn.

The Family Bed by Tine Thevenin explains why sleeping near the mother is good for babies.  I'm so glad I read this book several years before becoming a mother, because it completely changed my mind about co-sleeping!  I haven't read the newer edition of the book (although I have read other recent reviews of research on co-sleeping) but the 1970s edition has a charming spirit of having been put together by an impassioned mother who really wanted to help people with her experiences, her library research, and the stories she collected from other families, so that we would not suffer even a moment of the self-doubt she felt when her instincts cried out that her baby should not be left alone.

The Way We Never Were by Stephanie Coontz is a history professor's extremely thorough and readable explanation of what is and is not true about "the traditional American family."  Unlike some of the other books I've mentioned, this one tells you that a lot of what you thought you knew is wrong!  It's full of useful factoids and statistics, but it goes beyond that to explore the trajectories of different trends in society and their effects on one another.  Basically, there never has been a time when most families consisted of father, mother, their children, and nobody else and most families were completely supported by the father's income with no government assistance and nobody else in the family employed.  It's hard to meet that ideal these days not because we've gone off on the wrong track but because it always has been hard.

        

Christmas is almost here, so now is the time to plan your strategy for setting out less post-Christmas garbage than any other family on your block!  (We often achieve that goal, and we're in a mostly Jewish neighborhood.)  I'm assuming that your gifts are already chosen and wrapped, so this article is about what to do with the items cast off from your celebrations.  Reusing things not only saves you money and helps the environment but also creates a treasure trove of things to use next year that are already imbued with happy memories—and they just get better, year after year!

Gift wrap: Open presents by slitting the tape with your thumbnail and unfolding the paper.  Even young children can learn to do this (they may have trouble slitting/breaking the tape, but they can minimize ripping of the paper, anyway)—my son has seen gifts unwrapped this way all his life, assumes that's the right way, and always looks shocked at birthday parties when the kid wantonly shreds wrapping paper!  Yes, it's slower to save the paper; that stretches out the anticipation and tantalizes you with gradually increasing glimpses of the gift.  Fold the paper and keep it in a box to use again next year.
    It's true that paper doesn't look quite as good the second time around, but with a little creativity you can position it such that the creases and bits of tape are hidden, or you can cut off the damaged parts and use just the nice parts.  Rely on pre-used paper for smaller gifts, and save the new paper for bigger ones.
    When a piece of wrapping paper has only small areas that still look nice, you can cut out sections (one snowman, a cluster of bells, etc.) to use as gift tags on presents wrapped in a larger piece of the same paper, or to decorate a gift wrapped in solid-colored paper or a tablecloth (see below).
    Damaged gift wrap can be cut up to make a paper chain to decorate the house for the remaining 12 days of Christmas, used for a game of "Pass the Parcel", or crumpled for cushioning things inside boxes of Christmas presents you mail next year.
    If you have nibbling pets, let them shred worn-out gift wrap to give their habitat a festive look!

Ribbons and bows: If they still look nice, save them to use again!  We just toss them into a box.  Bows with their own adhesive can be re-stuck with a loop of tape.
    Satin ribbons are almost infinitely reusable.  The crinkly ones are trickier because, once untied, they never look the same again...but you can cut off the crumpled part and use the smaller remaining bits.  Try cutting several ribbons about 4" long, holding them together in a bunch and taping the middle to a gift, and then curling the ends.

Gift tags: Tags that are tied onto a package can be used again, if the giver is someone who will be wrapping gifts in your home next year.  Sometimes taped-on tags can be reused, too, if the tape will peel off or fold over without damaging the tag.

Christmas cards: If there is no writing on the inside front of the card, cut it off and use it (or pictures cut out of it) next year as a gift tag.  You can tape it on or punch a hole in one corner and tie a ribbon through it.

Product packaging: The typical family gift-opening session creates a heap of assorted boxes, blister-packs, clear plastic bags, twist-ties, foam blocks, odd little disks of various materials, tissue paper, and so on.  Some of this stuff is going to have to become garbage.  But look through it, as you pick up, and see what you can use: Boxes might be good for storing something else.  Bags can go to a dog-walker for waste disposal purposes.  Twist-ties from packaging often are stronger and longer than the ones you get with trash bags or in the produce department, so they may work better for your twisting needs, for instance binding up that extension cord that keeps slithering out from behind the bookcase and tripping Uncle Floyd.  Fluffy packing materials can be used when you mail packages.  Tissue paper can go into your collection of reusable gift wrap.
    As for those odd little disks and interestingly-shaped plastic things, children and other creative people often can find uses for them.  For instance, my almost-5-year-old son was annoyed that his toy helicopter didn't look like it was flying because its rotors were still, unless he spun them with his hand which was very cumbersome...so he and his dad found two clear plastic disks of the appropriate sizes, placed them over the rotors, and taped them from underneath; now it looks like they're whipping the air!

Plastic tablecloths: If you attend any events where those thin, semi-disposable plastic tablecloths are used and are going to be thrown away, wipe them clean, let them dry, and store them for next year.  (They take up very little space.)  Not only can they be used as tablecloths again, but they are great for wrapping large, awkward gifts—they are less likely to tear than paper.

Leftover food: Don't throw away anything edible!  Check out my recipes for using miscellaneous fruit and vegetables.  If you have leftovers from a cheese-and-crackers tray, shred the cheese and melt it over macaroni, and turn the crackers into crumbs for any recipe that requires crumbs.  Consider freezing excess leftovers (of things that can be frozen) and defrosting them later, when you're no longer tired of eating them and they'll be a pleasant reminder of your merry Christmas.
    Serve vegetable and fruit trimmings to vegetarian pets, and serve meat scraps and appropriate bones to carnivorous pets.  If you don't have the right kind of pet to enjoy your scraps, consider offering them to a neighbor with that kind of pet.
    Put inedible parts of plant foods and eggshells into your compost pile.  If you don't have one, you can start at this time of year!
    Coffee grounds and tea leaves can be put onto the soil around a plant (in a pot or outdoors) right away; they'll biodegrade there (with no unpleasant odor) and make the plant perky!

Paper napkins, etc.: Of course, it's more environmentally friendly to use real stuff, but if you must use disposables, you can compost those, too.  Paper plates that are made from just paper (no plastic coating) will break down into dirt in a year or less.

Food packaging: Any plastic or glass container with a lid can be washed and used to pack up leftovers for guests to take home.  (If you have extras of these, consider leaving them in the kitchen of your church, office, or other communal place for use by people who spontaneously need to store some food.)  Food bags, including the bags inside boxes of crackers and cereal, are good for storing leftover baked goods.  
    If you're having a big gathering and need name tags, make them out of thin cardboard from food boxes: Just cut it into rectangles, punch holes in the top corners, tie on some yarn or reused gift ribbon to hang around the person's neck, and write the name on the blank side.

After Christmas, many fabric stores have clearance sales on fabric with holiday motifs, so that's the ideal time to buy some and make cloth gift bags for next year, if you have (or can borrow) a sewing machine.  Cloth bags are much easier to use than wrapping paper, and they look great year after year!  They add value to gifts, and you may get them back the next year!

        

Here are two games that are easy to set up, use minimal materials, and are fun for kids about 2-10 years old at a party or holiday gathering.  (See also these knee-bouncing games for entertaining younger kids!)

Pass the Parcel
You will need a bunch of small toys, costume jewelry and similar trinkets, coins, and/or pieces of wrapped candy; a bunch of tissue paper or used-up gift wrap, in at least two different colors; and a source of music. 

Take a trinket and scrunch a piece of paper around it to make a ball.  Place another trinket against the outside of the ball, and scrunch a different-colored piece of paper around it.  Keep going, alternating colors, until you have a parcel at least the size of a football.

Have kids sit in a circle and pass the parcel until the music stops.  Then, whoever is holding the gets to unwrap one layer and keep the trinket.  (The alternating colors make it easier to remove one layer at a time.)  Try to time the stopping of the music such that each kid eventually wins at least once.

Going Fishing
On a big sheet of paper, draw fish swimming in water.   Hang it up such that people can be on both sides: put it on the back of a couch that's in the middle of a room, tape it across the doorway between rooms, etc.  Make fishing poles using sticks from outdoors and string.

One adult supervises a couple of kids standing a few feet from the "water" and casting their lines over it (careful of people standing behind them!) and another adult hides behind the "water" and clips things onto the end of the string using clothespins or paperclips.

Give mostly fish (rubber toy ones, cracker ones, candy ones...) but about every 5th kid throw in something unexpected and absurd and act very surprised when they pull it up.

        

One of the nice things about having two toilets in a home is that you can relax about keeping both of them able to handle everything.  As long as one of the toilets has full flushing capacity, the other can limp along in a delicate state, being used only for the easiest jobs, until you're good and ready to replace it.  Our upstairs toilet is in this category.  Yeah, it's kind of annoying having to traipse downstairs if you are upstairs when you feel a need to use the more capable toilet, and in the winter we wish our downstairs bathroom were better insulated, but it's working out . . . for those of us who live in the house and know the eccentricities of the upstairs toilet.

Trouble can arise when we have guests, though.  It's so embarrassing to clog up the toilet in someone else's house that we've had some guests not mention it, which sets up an unpleasant discovery for us or another guest.  Unclogging a toilet is even yuckier when it's clogged with someone else's poop than when it's your own!  So we want to avoid that problem, but it's difficult to remember to warn guests about it when they head for the bathroom, and it's hard to figure out what to say to explain the situation clearly without embarrassing everyone!

The night before a recent visit from friends, I suddenly remembered when I visited some relatives years ago and, while giving us a tour of their whole house, they said, "This is a Number One toilet.  If you're doing Number Two, it's better to go to the other bathroom."  (Just in case you're not familiar with these euphemisms, #1 means pee and #2 means poop.)  That was pretty discreet and clear, but they did have to remember to say it.  However, thinking of it gave me an idea:

I made a "prize ribbon" and stuck it on our toilet lid.  I cut it out of two pieces of scrap paper, a circle of yellow paper and two strips of blue paper with V-cuts in the ends to make them look like ribbons.  On the circle, I wrote, #1 Toilet!.  On the ribbon, I wrote, Please take larger challenges downstairs.

We always keep the lid of the toilet closed when it's not in use so that

• the germy water doesn't spray around the room when you flush
• anything I drop or knock off of the shelves (I'm the clumsy one in the family!) doesn't fall into the toilet
• there's no need to argue about leaving the seat up, because lowering the lid means lowering the seat; seat-raisers can lower the seat and lid together and need not complain about doing more work than seat-users

so the prize ribbon is visible to anyone entering the bathroom.  We hope that guests will realize that, in order to make sure the next person sees it, they need to lower the lid.  (We haven't had enough guests since awarding this prize to see whether it makes a difference.)

Reactions so far have ranged from much laughter and "What a great idea!" to not mentioning it.  But my favorite thing about our toilet's award turns out to be the way it affects my attitude.  Instead of grumbling about its inadequacy, I'm feeling sort of proud of it or at least amused by it sitting there showing off its award.  It works for me!