Why is the longest day of summer the first day of the official summer season? I mean, summer has really just arrived, but the days are already getting shorter.

What is the value of 24/7 news radio and television stations? There isn’t enough news that happens every twenty-fours hours, so the broadcasters repeat the same thing every twenty minutes or so.

Is there anybody out there who prefers gloomy days to sunny ones? If so, please get in touch with me and tell me why, so I can be more appreciative of crummy weather.

How can we bring back the handwritten thank-you note? I received one a couple weeks ago and found it to be much better than the email kind, maybe because it’s a rarity these days.

When will those food recipes that appear in local newspapers be tested before they are published? One recent offering neglected to indicate at what temperature to set the oven. Another forgot butter in the list of ingredients, while the directions said to melt it before adding it to the sauce.

Yesterday morning, I visited my local congressman’s office to purchase a new flag. I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, since the cost of the flag was eighteen dollars.

“Oh, we don’t take cash,” the office administrator said. “We have to send the money to Washington, and it has to go through a scanner to make sure it’s safe.”

“How about credit cards?” I said.

“We don’t take those either. We take only personal checks.”

I was nonplussed. I mean the Department of the Treasury printed the currency in my wallet; so, while I understand the security issues in Washington, I found it ironic that our own government didn’t accept cash in this instance. I assumed personal checks are subjected to the same scanner scrutiny, but didn’t feel like arguing my case. Instead, I offered to pay for the flag with a check, which the woman accepted without any additional identification.

While I left the congressman’s office with my new flag, I also left with more questions. Regardless of its form, what is the payment scanned for? Virus? Fingerprints? What if someone writes a bogus check for a flag? Does the government come after them? Are my fingerprints on the check compared to those in the FBI files?

I’ve wondered when the day would come when people would not accept cold, hard cash as payment for something. It came one step closer yesterday.

There’s always a big argument going on in my head about whether God’s favorite color is blue or green. Think about it.

The vast sky appears blue; water often appears blue too, particularly when the sun shines on it. And given that the majority of the earth’s surface is water, there’s the potential for a great amount of blue. Throughout the year from season to season, blue is constant; except that the blue of sky and water are reflections and not true colors.

At the same time, there’s the potential for a great amount of green. When trees bud and flowers bloom and fields ripen, the amount of green across the land is insatiable. It throbs and expands, most often between May and September, then it wanes. In winter where I live, green is a rare visitor, except for evergreens that dot the landscape.

So which wins?

As much as I personally prefer blue I think that scientifically I need to side with green. The reason is because it is usually true in nature and not dependent on light or air to make it be what it is. Blue, on the other hand, is deceiving, since such ethereal things can affect it.

It’s a rhetorical question at best, since humans don’t really have to choose between blue and green. Yet, I wonder what the Maker of the Universe had in mind when he or she tinkered with the primary colors.

Earl and I are considering gutting our bathrooms and updating them; however, given the configuration of our house, there is no way we can ever achieve the current look in bathrooms, regardless of our desire or our pocketbooks. This is because today’s bathrooms are out of control.

Visit a new-never-lived-in home, a model still on the market, and you’ll see what I mean. The bathrooms are the size of the first apartment I ever rented, with enough amenities to make the most curmudgeonly among us go “Wow.” There are heated floors for one’s chilled tootsies, steam showers for one’s nasal conditions, whirlpool tubs for one’s aching muscles, double sinks for oneself and one’s mate, a commode, a bidet, a floor length mirror, and more. Lighting, music, and heated towels have all invaded the room that was once set aside for the most basic of bodily functions; that is, bathing and peeing.

When you consider how much time you spend in the bathroom, is the room — that is, the space, of the bath — worth it? I don’t know. I can only imagine that today’s homeowners must view the bathroom as a getaway instead of a necessary place. A spa instead of a commode with handwashing accessories.

So why are Earl and I considering gutting our bathrooms if there is no room to really compete? For me, it’s about making them more functional and also getting rid of the ugly, really dated four inch tiles that hang out from the floor to the ceiling, screaming vintage nineteen-sixties when I want to scream early twenty-first century to some potential buyer down the road.

So, with that buyer in the back of my homeowner’s mind, I’ve decided that if I’m going to attract him or her with my newer bathroom, then I might as well pop for the remodeling now and enjoy the benefits rather than doing it down the road.

As for size, our new bathrooms won’t compete, but perhaps by the time we sell the place, logic and reality and common sense will have prevailed once again. Remember, it’s still basically only a place to wash and pee.